China

I am back from China, and it was an amazing trip! However, I am very grateful for the home I have, the job I do, and the country I live in. We started in Beijing and then flew two hours north to Heilonjiang province to the city of Harbin to visit schools. Russia is the north border of Heilonjiang and Mongolia is the west. You can see the Russian influence in many of the building and even in the cuisine. One of our best meals was in a Russian restaurant.

I climbed the Great Wall of China, visited Tiananmen Square, walked through the Forbidden City and visited the Llama temple and the Confucius temple. I even held a baby Siberian Tiger. (Fully grown those things are huge and dangerous.) We even visited some amazing schools, although they were way larger than I would ever want to be in charge of. (5,000 students and 200 teachers) The best part of the trip by far was the people.

For now, I will let some of my pictures tell the rest of the story.

The Great Wall of China was one of the highlights of my trip. Some of the steps were two inches high and others were over 12 inches high, and it was steep. They told us that over 1/3 of the people that helped build the wall died and they burried them in the wall--that's a lot of people! All I could think about were all the bodies I was probably walking over. If you climbed even one step of the great wall they called you a hero. I wear that title with honor because we climbed way more than one step. See the square guard tower at the top of the photo. We made it there and back down in the 45 minutes they gave us.

Our hotel in Beijing...

Our visit to the elementary school. We helped paint in art class, and listened to some wonderful

songs in music class (in English).

Tianenman Square...

The four star toilet in the Forbidden City. No toilet paper, and all the toilets were squatters. It could have been a billion star toilet and you wouldn't have been able to get me to use it. It was cool inside, which helped in the 104 degree weather.

Part of the Forbidden City. Home only to the Emperors. The brick was 15 layers deep so that tunnels couldn't be made to get the emperor, and no trees so Kung Fu fighters would have no place to hide.

Harbin, with all of our Chinese guides. All but Alvin were going to school to be educators. Alvin is studying statistics.

Our gang from the back of the bus...

A 30 day old Siberian tiger cub. Those claws were sharp and he was grumpier than you might think.

Queen Chicken

See, that stinkin' hill is really, really steep!

I had this grand idea. I wanted to be more active over the Christmas holiday. Sounds good so far--right? Well I told my sister that we should go sledding while school was out. M being the ever great sister, and always willing to go along with my grand plans, agreed. We invited all the nieces and nephews that were interested to come along and even gathered a few neighborhood friends. Well all was well until I was at the top of a really steep hill. Then I chickened out. Really good of me, I know. I even pushed a few unwilling people kicking and screaming on thier way, but I wouldn't go down myself. I could just imagine this big body taking out a few kids and small adults along the way. The pictures in my mind were not pretty. Finally all conditions worked to my advantage and I kicked off for ONE run down the hill. I would have gone another time, but luck wasn't with me, and I fell on some ice on the way back up the hill and bruised up my knee. Now I know two things--I'm still a kid at heart and sledding is fun but scarier the older and bigger you get, and two C is a very patient man. He stood at the bottom of the hill and made sure he got pictures of everybody's run down the hill. And let me tell you--he waited a long time for me to get my brave on. What a brother in law! M and the kids were great too. They gave me a lot of encouragement.

By the way, I usually try not to set too many new years resolutions, but this year I will be trying to update the blog a little more regularly.