Hello everyone! We have arrived safely and enjoyed our Trans-Pacific travel immensely. Mason made friends with a young man from B.C. in the airport who was travelling to Beijing for a Chinese language contest. Within minutes he was dazzling all of us by translating anything we asked into Mandarin. Then they got talking about Martial Arts and comparing their favourite forms. Well, 5 minutes later we had a full scale Martial Arts demonstration going on the the Vancouver airport, as Mason and Nikko sparred. It was entertainig to say the least. It made my heart sing to see Mason enjoying the fellowship of those we were travelling with, being so social and also to be so comfortable in his own skin. I got a bit on video- I will download it for you tomorrow if time permits. I love that boy. While watching a sub-titled movie on the plane I caught this line and wrote it down, " Children are not colouring books; we cannot fill them with our favourite colours." No we surely cannot, they get to do the colouring with the experiences we provide, and it does get messy, and it is not always inside the lines, but it always beautiful.

We arrived at 3:30 pm local time July 8th. Crossing the international dateline was a big deal for the boys and we spent a great eal of time doing time conversions on the plane. Time really is such an abstract concept. Children have little need to quantify and qualify time, and as such explaining it to them was abit of a challenge. They feel no need to control how they spend time either. They are just present in the moment and when it is gone it is not grieved, simply passed. I remember when Parker was small he would say that everything that was in the past was something that happened yesterday; whether it had been 4 days or five minutes since the occurance. Well, I can say that yesterday was a good day, all 27 hours of travelling and settling into our new surroundings. It did not feel like we crossed over or through any time-shift worm holes, but here were are, now a day ahead of the rest of our Canadian family, and transplanted into a totally new world. So cool. Bring on the adventure!

It is warm, with high humidity and lots of smog here in Beijing. The hotel is very comfortable, and the food is excellent. We are heading out this morning to the Summer Palace and the 270 hectares of gardens that it boasts. We hope to post some photos for you later.