Arrived!

I have safely arrived in Beijing. After a 13 hour flight, I was pretty exhausted. There were two doctors who came onto the plane after we arrived to take our temperature. When we got off the plane, we had to go through 3 checkpoints to make sure that we did not have the swine flu. China is completely obsessed with the swine flu virus. All Americans are quarantined for 7 days upon arrival. One of the boys on my team did get the virus, so he was taken straight from the plane to the hospital. There were 5 others on my trip who rode in the plane with him, so they were all taken to isolation with a hotel for 7 days. So my whole team can only stay in two hallways for the next 7 days in order to stay 5 feet away from Chinese people. We had to wear masks, but they recently told us that we could take them off. We are just doing training right now. My group seems very good. I am already making friends and getting to know all sorts of people. The living conditions are pretty primitive, but it is kind of fun. I will write back later when I get more time.