Beijing bound.

So I made reservations for Cynthia and the boys to join me in Beijing.  I used frequent flyer miles and was all set to have them depart Shanghai at 2:30pm and arrive Friday evening around 5pm. When I got my confirmation e-mail back from Delta (for China Eastern Airlines) they had changed the departure to 8:30am arriving in Beijing around 11am.  This sometimes happens with award travel so we made the necessary changes to our plans and thought everything was just fine. How silly of me.  On Friday morning around 6am I went online to confirm the flight details only to discover that the original booking was restored, Cynthia was en route to the airport with Mr. Dong and the boys and their flight was scheduled to take off at 2:40pm not 8:30am.  It was too early to call any of my Chinese friends to help translate this to Mr. Dong so I called Cynthia told her of the news and then started calling Delta and China Eastern to see if we could get them on the 8:30am flight.  No one could help and so we decided that Cynthia and Mr. Dong would have to try to work with the check in counter to try to get on.  Miracle of miracles - they succeeded and got the last four seats.  Wow - talk about answered prayers!  They arrived in Beijing and were picked up with no trouble at the airport and delivered to me at the hotel.  We spent the afternoon at Tiananmen Square and visited the Forbidden City.  Had dinner at a nice Chinese restaurant near the hotel - fish, fried eggplant, sauteed sweet potato chips, peanuts, beef stir fry, spicy tofu, spinach with soy beans and orange shrimp.  Regan had a glass of apple juice that was really one step away from apple sauce - not real refreshing but quite tasty.  The juices here tend to be a bit "pulpy".  He ended up ordering a Coke.  Heading to the Great Wall today.