panda eyes

It's been a very long travel day(s).

We were up at 3.40 am Beijing time and out of the hotel by 4.45 am. Check in was a bit slow at the Beijing airport but everything went smoothly. The food on China Eastern is not great. It's actually really bad. We had about three hours to wait in Shanghai until the 11 hour flight to Vancouver. We were starving but couldn't find anything to eat while we waited so a few of us ended up getting 6 orders of fries and 2 cokes for $50. We had to use up our yuan. 

I can't sleep on planes so I watched a couple movies and played Bejeweled - there are lots of things to do on the back of a plane seat these days. 

We finally arrived home to our excited pack of mutts at about 5.00pm.  It's been a 31 hour day so far. We are trying to stay  awake for another hour and then take some melatonin and hopefully sleep through the night. 

I will post more things we learned about China - that I couldn't post while we were in China - over the weekend. The government monitors and blocks 'controversial' topics from the internet. What warrants being controversial is up for debate. Many social media discussion outlets like Facebook, YouTube and other blogging forums (like Wordpress) are blocked. Oh, and Tibet. They don't like internet chatter about freeing Tibet.

I must get ready for bed. My eyes lids are heavy and I don't think the steam from green tea or Chinese beer can cure these panda eyes!