Lots of Birthdays

Let me get this straight: Philadelphia is playing Tampa Bay in the World Series, the St. Louis Rams have won two in a row, and the Missouri Tigers have lost two in a row? What the heck is going on over there?

Over here, we are in our usual routine. It is Friday night, and we have one more day of work until we get Sunday off. The week has been full of preparing for classes. On Wednesday, I had to participate in a chemistry lab experiment, because a few of my students were taking an examination for Cambridge University. It was a big deal, because, as the teacher, it is assumed that my test results were correct, and their results were graded in comparison with mine. I think everything went well, though. We also just learned that the school decided to give us a housing allowance, which will cover a huge portion of the rent in the new apartment that we are moving into. Our new place is brand new, and furniture is being bought for it (by the landlord) right now. We are excited because it is much more suitable for the kids. We will have some pictures of it in the near future, as we expect to move in next week.

I wanted to deliver a few pictures of the kids from the past few days. Here is the birthday girl, Etain, opening one of her gifts in the living room. (The handgun, not real, was Dan's, not Etain's.)
After opening a few gifts, we headed to the nearby restaurant for brunch. Here are Etain and me. I am sporting my new haircut. I got a haircut from a Chinese barber and I did not like it, so I tried to fix it on my own. Well, I couldn't get it right on the first try, or the second, and so it just kept getting shorter and shorter. But it is a free haircut. I guess you get what you pay for.

(Long) Side note: At the hotel, they flew in a chef from Mexico to cook Mexican food this past week. It really hit the spot, because nachos, tacos and burritos are otherwise not available here. It is amazing how different the diet here is. For breakfast (at the school) I usually have boudzas [bowd-zuh](steamed doughballs stuffed with sausage and/or spinach) and hard boiled eggs (I gave up the fried eggs, at least during breakfast). Dan has boudzas and rice with milk. For lunch (again at school), I have white rice every day, usually coupled with one or more of the following: scrambled eggs with tomatoes, collared greens, carrots and cabbage, shrimp (head and tail still attached) , curried stew, stir-fried noodles and/or sweet potatoes (I always hated sweet potatoes until we came here; now I like them. I actually eat a lot of foods I would not have eaten previously, with no complaints. Every few days, though, the schools serves this stuff that I can not even go near. It looks like Jello jigglers, only clear and covered with slime. To me it seems like it would taste like gelatinous grease. One guy from Wisconsin eats pounds of it; I can't even look at the stuff.) Some days, though, we get lucky and we get a sliver of pizza or a chicken wing or a meat (I assume?) kabob. For dinner, we often have fried rice. (I estimate that we eat rice at about 10 meals per week). Other days, we will have noodles. There are many Muslim restaurants where fresh noodles are made and cooked after you order. (If you have ever watched the Travel Channel or Cooking Channel, you may have seen restaurants where cooks cut strings of noodles from dough and then throw them across the restaurant into a big pot or wok; that is what happens at Muslim noodle places. The noodles are flash boiled in a hot broth. They taste amazing, and I am getting hooked. ) There are also a few rare days where we will get a small pizza from an restaurant that has Italian food. Also, sometimes, after a few days of nothing but Chinese food (imagine going to a Chinese buffet 10 times per week), sometimes the absolutely greatest thing in the world is a grilled cheese sandwich made in your own kitchen. On the whole, the food has been very good. I am sure that once I am able to actually read menus, it will only get better.

Here is a picture of Etain and Jenny, our supervisor who lives across the hall from us (for now). Etain's birthday was also Jenny's birthday, so Jane and I treated her to brunch at the above hotel. She got Etain a doll and some building blocks, which all of the kids enjoyed.

Last Sunday, Dan and Jane headed out to a birthday party while the girls and I stayed home (the party was in the middle of one of their rare monster 4 hour naps). Here is a picture of Dan and the other party-goers. The birthday boy was Elliot, who you can not really see in the picture (the other blond hair). His mom is right above him, Severin, who is a teacher at the school. They are from France, and they live across the street from the building that we will be moving into.
The other night, a few of the teachers got together in a neighboring apartment for a game night. We brought over the game Balderdash, in which you make up crazy definitions for odd words. Jane and I played with Jenny, from New Zealand, Amy, from China, and Eduardo and Annie, from the Philippines. There was a definite language barrier at first: the girl from China thought that we actually knew and used the words all the time. Her answers for the first few rounds were very simple, such as: A type of bird. However, after she got the hang of it, she and everyone else did quite well, and we had a lot of fun.

Well, that has been what has gone on throughout the week. Next Wednesday, Jane and I are going out to an expat (ex-patriot = foreigner) happy hour/dinner. On Friday, Jane and Severin are planning a Halloween party in a conference (actually a ping-pong) room in Severin's apartment complex (the Chinese do not really celebrate Halloween, but there are plenty of foreigners that live in that specific complex). After Halloween, it is Jane's and my anniversary, and then my birthday. We were considering going to Shanghai to celebrate, because it all goes on during a three day weekend for us.

Below is a video of Etain doing some walking. She took about 15 steps on her birthday and she has never stopped walking since. She walks all over the house. She has also developed a real personality lately, and she is quite funny. Enjoy ! (Assuming it works (I still can't get it vertical)).

Post-Beijing

Sorry about the lack of posts since Beijing. I see that we have had plenty of visitors, so I feel obligated to put up some pictures. In the week back after Beijing, us teachers had to turn in exam forms for periodical exams. This meant that we had to come up with appropriate tests, which was a lot of work. The next week we administered the tests on Monday and Tuesday, and graded them on Wednesday and Thursday. [On a complete tangent, a 23 year old guy from Wisconsin who works in my office asked me how old I was. I told him 30, and he said "huh". When I asked him why he asked, he said that he put together a math problem from one of his exams, and he used what he thought was my age as the answer. The answer, though, was 42! He tried to explain it away by saying that I was a lawyer with three kids, which seemed 'mature' to him. Strangely, I cant get it out of my head that someone thinks I look 42.] Back to the story, there have been few posts because preparing and grading ("marking" as it is called here) tests takes a bit of time, and little else has gone on other than what is shown in the following pictures:

Here is a picture of Dan with a few kids from his school. They went on a school trip to Dinosaur Park, which is an amusement/learning park close to our house. He came back that evening very tired, after having enjoyed himself quite a bit. (He said for lunch he ate crackers and soda, and only ate candy the rest of the day. Kids get away with that here. The adults spoil the kids so much, if they say they want candy instead of a sandwich, they get the candy).
Here are a few shots of Evelyn, who is doing quite well. She acts as if she understands Chinese, and she may very well not be faking it. If Jiu Jie says something to her, she will respond with a yes or a no, making me believe she understands. Every time Evelyn sees a camera now, she immediately goes into a pose, usually with hands on hips and head slightly cocked:

Here is a pose too often used by Etain, lying on the ground at your feet crying. People say she must really be a Chinese child, because she is getting quite spoiled. Every morning, the kids get up about 45 minutes too early. As a result, we just let them do whatever they want while we stay in bed. During those 45 minutes, not a single cry is heard. As soon as we stick our heads out our door though, crying is normal and everyone turns needy. Etain will be fine until she sees someone, and then she starts crying in hopes that she will be picked up. (She is getting better though, as I explain later).

Last Saturday, Jane and I were invited to the opening ceremonies of the new sports complex in town. It is a very cool dome shaped structure with lavish grounds. Changzhou has no sports teams though. Further, they are building another one right across the street from it, with the full expectation that they will both sit empty. Changzhou is, from what I hear and see, anxious to become a bigger, more important city. It therefore spends money to impress, and it seems to have plenty of money to spend. Everywhere you look there are construction cranes building new structures. Supposedly 40% of the construction cranes in the world are in neighboring Shanghai.

Here is a shot of the entrance, though not a very good one, admittedly.
When we got to the stadium, all foreign teachers and business owners were told to stand in a group because we were going to be in a parade. We all grouped together, making small talk while we waited for the parade to start. Around us were many other groups, from police to sanitary workers to local teachers, etc. They all were in perfect formation, with rows of ten. We were told to get into rows of ten, which never really worked out. When we ended up starting the parade, everyone marched perfectly in step, except for us, who traveled like a big oozing blob.

Here is a picture of me with the nurses, the group that was right in front of us.

Here we are traveling around the inside of the stadium. It was an awesome experience, because the stadium was packed with local citizens. Everybody in the stadium was either given clappers or those inflated thunder-sticks, and they cheered crazily. It was pretty wild to have 40,000 people going wild for some local teachers. In this picture, just under the red banner are the mayor of Changzhou and the Chief of the Southeastern Division of the Chinese Communist Party (I was told).

Here is a picture I took of ourselves on the jumbotron. If you can zoom in (if interested) we are on the far right side of the screen, in white.

The opening ceremonies were pretty incredible. There were tens of thousands of performers, all in elaborate costumes. They danced around in perfect formation. Hot air balloons dropped confetti over the crowd. In one portion of the stands, an entire group of people held up cards the entire time to make large pictures that changed for each act. Here are a few shots of the final few acts.

It turns out that all of the performers were kids from the City of Changzhou. The pride in the city was pretty cool.

After the opening ceremonies, Jane and I and a few other foreign teachers went to the outdoor bar, a popular place among foreigners. They served tiny little meat skewers, along with grilled green beans. Here, I am getting my shoes waxed, for 4 quai, about $.75. We gave him a meat skewer as a tip.

After exams, our school had a sports ceremony as well. Here is the school's performance, out on our track.

After opening ceremonies, the students were involved in numerous athletic competitions. Here are Dan and Ushi in their school track suits. (No matter how many times I tried, I can not get this picture to load correctly).

Here is Dan approaching the start line for his race, the 100 meter.

Judging by the looks of this start, I do not know how well he did (he is much younger then everyone else, though). He had a good time nonetheless.

The biggest news of the week was that Etain's birthday was yesterday; she is now one year old. To celebrate, we had McDonalds and cake (and lollipops for the non-cake eaters). Here is Etain eyeing her cake, which was very elaborate, the only way cakes here are made.

Here she is with mom at the beginning of the sugary meal.

Here are a few shots of her further into the meal.

After she ate and got cleaned up, Etain did the same thing that Dan did on his first birthday: she walked! She has taken a step or two in the past, but this time she really took about 10-15 steps, making it all the way across the room. Even within the past 24 hours, she seems to prefer walking to crying to be held, which is good for us all. Below should be a 8 second video of Etain eating her cake, feeling the effects of her sugar high.

We have a 3 day weekend, which we initially planned on using for a trip to Shanghai, but instead we are going to stick around here. We are going to a birthday party tomorrow for a foreign teacher who has a son Dan's age. Tonight, some teachers are getting together for a game night. Also, today Jane went out and picked out furniture for a new apartment that we are planning on moving into in a few weeks. I will write a bit more about that once it becomes more of a reality. I will try to put up some more posts in the next few days.

Zaijian (tsi-chen), which means goodbye, see you soon.

Beijing Part III

After Jane, Dan, Evelyn and I returned from the park on Wednesday, we ate lunch and headed out to the mall. Originally, we had planned on going to a children's amusement park, because Jane had read online that it was fun and cheap. However, when she checked with someone at the hostel, she found out that the price to the park had increased 1000%, and that admission no longer included tickets for rides. We didn't think that was worth it, so we went shopping. Not that we entirely hung the kids out to dry, the mall had a very large indoor playground, so we took them there for a while. Here is a shot of one wing of the mall. It was 8 stories tall, and it had every single store you could ever think of; in addition to being 8 stories high, the mall was 4 blocks long. Below is a picture of the shoes outside the Nike store.

I thought the shoes were pretty cool. One of the first things that I noticed when we got to China was that the 1980s were very much in fashion here, as the above shoes seem to illustrate. All of my male students wear tight black denim jeans, with ankles that are very tight. It reminded me of tight-rolling your jeans. Also, if you see people with ties, they are very narrow, and often squared off at the bottom of the tie. Many of my students also have long hair (the guys), and you can tell that they spend a ton of time working on it to make it look like they were trying out for a part in a John Landis '80s flick. There seem to be more hair salons on the streets than restaurants, and there are plenty of people with colored streaks in their hair.

One day Jane and I were talking about trying to think of something to sell in China to make money, given the fact that the '80s were in. I could only think of one thing, which were things called slap-bracelets. They were pieces of straight plastic that you would slap on your wrist, causing them to curl up like a bracelet. Not thinking that was our million-dollar idea, we quickly dismissed it. Two days later, we walked by a store, and what were they selling right out front? Slap-bracelets.

At the mall, we first took the kids to the play area. It was a great deal, getting two hours of play for less than $10. The kids loved it so much that we were able to leave them all there with Jiu Jie so that Jane and I could go shopping for some essentials. The indoor play area of the mall was really neat. It was about the size of a basketball court, with three levels of bouncy balls, trampolines, slides, tubes and swings. They had cannons which shot out nurf balls, which were Dan's favorite. Etain and Evelyn were fans of the swings. Here is Etain doing her swinging.

Here is Dan with Optimus Prime and Bumblebee (the Transformers), who were having a very large display in one of the areas of the mall. There were tons of children's toys, and the prices were astronomically high. It was amazing that some toy that would be made in China and sold in the U.S. for $10 would be sold here for $20. We didn't get it, other than to think that maybe the stores were really trying to take advantage of the newly created disposable income that people here supposedly have.

After shopping, we grabbed some street food and headed home. We had planned on having Jiu Jie babysit the kids so that Jane and I could go to the Beijing Opera, which is a certain style of opera that is performed here. We got to the lobby and our ride came to pick us up. We sat with the guide in a taxi, which was not going anywhere fast because of the Beijing traffic. In fact, nothing on the street was moving fast at all. After a few minutes and only moving a block or so, the guy said we should get out and walk. We got out with him and walked briskly for about 20 blocks, but he finally said that there was no way we were going to make it on time unless we took a taxi (by the time we walked 20 blocks, the traffic died down, but every single taxi was occupied). We said that it was no big deal if he could arrange to get us our money back. To our surprise, he said that he had the money in his pocket, which he handed over with no hassle. We thanked him for his trouble, and we just headed off to have a few drinks and maybe grab some dinner.

Here is a picture of a bus in Beijing, packed as full as possible. Imagine being in the middle of this bus, when it is moving at a pace of about 1 block per 5 minutes...

Here is a sight you probably wouldn't see in America. Jane is standing outside a public restroom, with the attendant using a portable wok to cook food to sell. It actually smelled pretty good (the food, that is), but we did not partake.

Instead of a sit down dinner, Jane and I decided to head to Tienanmen Square. The Square was crowded, but it was very neat. Here is a picture of me, standing in Tienanmen Square, with the entrance to the Forbidden City in the background.

Here is a picture of Jane, taken in the same spot as the picture above, just rotated 90 degrees. She is standing in front of the People's Monument, which is a testament to the martyr's who lost lives in Chinese social and political history. It was cool. Also in Tienanmen Square are the Great Hall of the People (China's house of representative equivalent), the Museum of Chinese History, and the Mausoleum of Mao Tse Tung. Jane has seen Mao's embalmed body, and the line to see him likely lasted 2-3 hours, so we did not go. Supposedly the neatest part of it is that there are blocks and blocks of flowers that people bring to honor him.

After seeing these things, Jane and I walked around for a bit, did some shopping at some small stores and headed home for the night.

The next morning, when we woke up, we decided to go to the Temple of Heaven before getting back on the train. We took a bus to the Temple of Heaven Park, getting there at about 9:30 a.m. When we walked in the gate, there again was soft music playing over speakers. There were many different paths to take, with many attractions to see. Because it did not seem too crowded, we told Jiu Jie that she could go see whatever she would like, and that we would meet her at the actual temple at noon, before we had to head back to the hostel to get our luggage for the 4 p.m. train departure.

Once we walked a little farther, there seemed to be some sort of attraction going on at a small building. It turns out that there was a wedding going on, and outside they had drummers and dancers who made one of the long Chinese dragons. Though we got there right as it was ending, Dan and Evelyn were able to get their picture taken with the dragon-dog.

We got to the center of the park and realized it was a lot more crowded than we had thought, and that 2 hours was not much time to see the many things that the park had to offer. This, mostly, was because we could not walk very far without being asked if our photo could be taken, with the large group that would form thereafter.

Regardless, we were able to see a few of the attractions. Here are the kids playing on the outer wall of the sacrificial center. The wall that Dan is standing on is actually the perimeter of a huge circle, in which sacrifices were held to appease the gods.

Here is Evelyn, doing some of her modeling along the wall.

Here are the kids and me outside the gate to one of the open-area temples. Once we got closer to it, the crowd became much more dense.

I wanted to go to the center of the temple, because I had read that there was a stone platform there (about 3 feet in diameter). According to the park's leaflet, whoever is standing on the stone platform is able to have a direct conversation with the gods. I thought this would be a pretty cool thing to be able to do, so Dan and I headed up there (Jane stayed back with the girls, because of the crowd and the steps). When we got to the top, there were roughly 50,000 Chinese people packed into the small circle around the stone. We nudged our way closer to the stone, only to find out there there was a ridiculously long line in order to stand on the stone for a few seconds. Knowing we didn't have that kind of time, I just told Dan to run up there real quick and jump on the stone for a second as someone else was getting off. Dan obliged, so for about half of a second, he was in direct communication with ancient Chinese gods. He has yet to reveal the details of this conversation.

After we went to the stone, Dan and Jane went to a whispering wall, which was an ancient, circular stone wall that had perfect acoustics such that a person on one side could whisper and it travels around the perimeter such that the person on the other side can hear it perfectly. This seemed neat, but given the fact that there were tens of thousands of people trying it out at the same time, it was not that effective.

We then headed towards the Temple of Heaven at the other side of the park. When Jane and I were leaving the whispering wall, we realized the major mistake that we had made: We told our 5 foot tall Chinese nanny that we would meet her at the main attraction of the park, which probably was being visited by 4 million people that day. As noon came and went, we started getting very nervous. We had thought we told her exactly where to meet (by pointing on a map), but when we got there, we realized it was not quite as simple as we thought. We started to stress out, because we really were running close to the time when we absolutely had to leave to get to our train. Also, the language barrier was a problem, we knew Jiu Jie and she knew Jane and Tom, but other than first names, that was it. Luckily, at about 12:40, Jane somehow spotted her. We headed off to the hostel soon thereafter, but we were able to shoot a few pics beforehand. Here is Dan trying to look like a runway model like Evelyn, but he instead looks more like a Price-Is-Right model, I think. In this picture is the actual Temple of Heaven.
We got back to the hostel, grabbed our bags, and found out that we had to go out immediately and get a taxi for the train station. Here are the girls on our way out.

We headed out to the curb, but every taxi that went by was taken. Further, even those taxis that passed were not moving very fast, as there was tons of traffic. I was getting very nervous that we would miss the train, because there seemed to be no sign of us going anywhere anytime soon. So, we decided to walk in the direction of the train station, based on the unscaled map that we had. It is quite difficult to push a double stroller packed to capacity, while carrying bags worth of 4 days of luggage down a narrow, stone Chinese street. When we made it to the main street, we were not allowed to cross because the street was too wide. Instead, we had to go down steps and go under the street in a subway-type alley. The stairs have ramps built into a portion of them, so I maneuvered the stroller onto the ramp to head down the stairs. I quickly realized, though, that the stairs were too steep, and the stroller was way to heavy to manage. By that time, Etain was in the front seat sleeping, and as we were heading down, she began to lean forward. Everyone thought she was going to go flying down the concrete stairs, but they could not see that she was buckled in under her blanket (Regardless, even I was scared when seeing her tilt forward). I was able to back up and take the stroller down backwards, which was still difficult because of the bags on my back and the stuff packed underneath. We made it across the street unscathed, and Etain never even woke up.

We made it to another large street, which required going up and down a large pedestrian bridge. Luckily, there were some people there who were willing to help carry the stroller up and down this time. We continued to walk in the direction of the station, and finally it came into view. In fact, the receptionist at the hostel told us that, given traffic, it would take an hour to get there by taxi. We made it in 40 minutes.

On the train ride home, we had four beds, two lower beds and two middle beds in the same bunk. The kids did not go to sleep quite as well as they did on the first train, but everyone still did pretty well. As Etain, Evelyn, Jane, Jiu Jie and I slept, Dan hung out just outside our compartment in the hallway with a kid named Frank (at least that was his English name), who spoke pretty good English. It was pretty funny to hear their conversation, as Frank was extremely polite and well mannered, talking about the United States and the president. Dan, however, only talked about Star Wars, his topic of choice.

Here are Dan and Frank as we were de-boarding the train.

Here is Dan and one of the train stewardesses that he had a crush on (she liked him too), as she spent the first two hours playing with him.

Our train back actually ended in Nanjing, which is a few towns away from Changzhou. It was the only train available. When we got to Nanjing, the kids and I hung out while Jane and Jiu Jie went to find train tickets to Changzhou. We were all pretty tired, and I was hoping that we would not have to spend a night or an entire day in Nanjing. To my surprise, Jane and Jiu Jie came running back soon after, saying that we had to run to a train that was leaving in ten minutes. We made it to the train, which was a speed train, and it only was a 50 minute ride to our home town. We made it back to our apartment at about 9:30 a.m., and pretty much relaxed the rest of the holiday.

I am writing this on Thursday night. We work through Saturday this week. Next week, however, there are tests that take place on Monday and Tuesday. (I spent the last couple nights preparing chemistry exams). After that, on Wednesday and Thursday, the school is having sports days, in which the entire school competes in athletic competitions (like a mini-Olympics). We are then off for three days, which we plan to use for a short trip to Shanghai, which is only about 1.5 hours away by speed train.

As always, I will keep you posted. Thanks for reading; we have had over 1000 views of this simple website so far...

Beijing Part II

Sorry for the delay in getting Beijing pictures out. We have mid-semester tests coming up next week, so I have to prepare four different sets of science tests. Also, a stomach bug has run through our family (I was the only one spared). So, we have been quite pre-occupied for the last few days. Anyways, here are pictures of day two and three of our trip to Beijing. Above are Dan and Evelyn in the back of the mini-bus that we took to the Great Wall. The Great Wall is actually a couple hours North of Beijing. In order to get there, the gang got up about 7:00 a.m. We went to the subway, which was right at Tienanmen Square, and which was about 12 blocks from our hostel. We walked to the subway and took it to the bus station. When we got to the bus station, we boarded a long distance bus. Evelyn sat on my lap, Dan on Jane's, and Etain on Jiu Jie's. It was pretty cramped for the bus ride, which took just under 2 hours. Again, though, I expected the ride to be horrible, but there were no problems at all. When we got off the bus, we were bombarded by people at the bus terminal, as they knew we were going to the Great Wall. Everyone was trying to get us to choose them to take us the rest of the way to the Wall. We settled on one guy who gave us the best price, so we all piled into his van, which was called a mini-bus over here. Dan and Evelyn above are in the back seat with Jane. As you can see below, I sat in the front seat, Jiu Jie sat in the middle, and Etain pretty much climbed wherever she wanted (no seat belts or car seats here).

The mini-bus ride lasted about 20 minutes. Finally, we arrived in the little town where access to the Great Wall was available. We saw the Great Wall as we were driving, and it was quite impressive. When we got to the town, we bought tickets to get on the Great Wall via gondola. However, the gondola was at the top of a hill, with a cobblestone street full of vendors. The vendors in Beijing were very aggressive; they wanted to make the sale. There were a few instances on the street when we were walking, were approached by someone wanting to sell us something like pillow covers or posters or flags or ornamental chopsticks, which we denied. Rather than getting the hint, the person would follow us for one or two blocks, constantly shouting out ever lower prices. The vendors at the bottom of the Great Wall were no different. When they saw Jane, they would say, "Hey lady", as if that was an affectionate greeting. They sold everything from hats to t-shirts to statues to food. Their favorite thing to do was to say "One dollar". One lady told me that t-shirts were one dollar, which I thought was pretty cheap, so I told her I would take shirts for the kids. She quickly changed her tune, giving a price in Chinese that was nowhere near $1. It didn't work on us, but I am sure it is effective on tourists just up for the week, who don't know the buying rules. (I mentioned to Jane that the Olympics must have been a major boom for street vendors in Beijing, because people probably came over who did not haggle with prices, and who thought the quoted price was already pretty good. Jane's rule of thumb is to try to get things for no more than 60% of the original price quoted. Using this method, she bought some Great Wall t-shirts for the kids for a good price).

We took the gondola to the top of the Wall. Here is a picture of the O'Toole family on top of the gondola base. It was situated on one of the large lookouts on the Wall. You can see the Wall stretching out behind us.

Here is a picture of Dan in another one of the stops along the Great Wall.

Here are Jane and Etain. Directly below them is Evelyn, looking out one of the drainage holes for the Wall.

Here is Dan sitting atop one of the lookouts of the Great Wall. To get up there, you had to climb very steep steps, and then climb a mini-wall that was about 3 feet tall. It was difficult to get up there, but the views were great. (I took a video up there, which I will post later. I am at school right now, and don't have access to anything other than these pictures, which I saved earlier).

Here is a picture of one of the turrets, with Dan at the top of the stairs. When in Beijing, which was totally crowded, everyone that we talked to put in their two cents about where we were going on the Wall. All of the Chinese people told us that we were going to the wrong part of the Wall, because it was not "touristy" enough. However, this pictures, as far as I am concerned, shows that Jane made the right choice on where to go, because there were plenty of times when we could be on the wall with no one else around.

I think that picture is also interesting for other reasons. First, it shows why we did not bring the stroller on the Great Wall. There are tons of steep steps; the road getting up to the Great Wall was hard enough to manage. Also, it has the potential to be a very dangerous place. There were plenty of places where you were solely on your own to ensure your safety. In many places, if you tripped or mis-stepped, you were going to fall 10-12 feet. Further, there were a lot of bricks that were crumbled. There were no railing or guards anywhere. Back home, I don't think you could ever have been allowed to walk on the Wall. When you see this, though, it really gives you the appreciation that this was not built for tourists, but it was built by hand to act as a guard post against invaders. In that way, its ruggedness is very neat. I was nervous in some spots though, for the kids sake.

Here is a picture of Evelyn and me walking down from one of the stops. You can see how steep the grade is of the Wall in this spot.

Here is a picture that Jane took of the kids and me. Jiu Jie is hiding behind me, not wanting to be photographed.

Here are the kids relaxing on the wall. The further you got from the gondola, the less people there were. We were able to take these pictures without anyone around because we were a pretty good distance away at this point.

Here is Etain on the Wall. As you can see, though she knows how to walk, she still prefers to crawl.

Here is the newly two-year old Evelyn, striking a pose on the Wall. She is always willing now to get her picture taken.

Here is Dan. Jane was a bit disappointed that the leaves had not started to change colors, but I think it was pretty impressive nonetheless. (I found out that the Wall is also "open" in Winter. I cant imagine trying to walk this thing when snow is covering it. I don't know of anyplace nearby, within 30 minutes, where you could get medical attention other than simple first aid.)

Here are the girls and I on the gondola on the way back down from the Wall.

When we left the wall, we took another mini-bus back to the bus station. Luckily, on the bus on the way back, we were some of only about 15 passengers. As a result, we were able to each have our own seat, with most people napping. The bus ride back took only a bit more than an hour, and we easily managed the subways to get back home. We grabbed some quick street food for dinner (Jane and I are starting to prefer street food rather than sitting down at restaurants). After eating, everyone went to bed. Jane and I planned on going out, but we were too tired.


The next morning, Etain woke up quite early and was quite cranky. She needed an early nap, so while she napped, Jane, Dan, Evelyn and I went for a walk to a nearby park. The park, which I think was called Behai (Bay-hi) Park, was the site of a large temple. It was very cool inside, and I am glad that Jane and I stumbled upon it. Here are Jane and the kids at the entrance of the park, which had a sculpture of flowers. The kids are showing their meat on a stick, which was very good. It was not like a hot dog, but was rather like a breakfast sausage that has a maple syrup taste. Evelyn sure liked them, she had about 3 of them.

The park was enormous, with a large lake in it. One side of the lake had boats on it, and the other side was covered with huge lillypads (The two sides were separated by a walking bridge). Here is a picture, which I like, of Jane standing in front of all of the lillypads.

Here are the kids and I, again in front of the lillypads. In the distant background is the large temple. We did not make it up there, though, because there were too many steps for the stroller. There was also plenty to see otherwise.

Throughout the parks in China, you can see people doing exercises. Many people go to the park to do their tai-chi, which is like a slow balancing karate. In different areas of the park, there were many people doing different types of exercises. In one spot, there were women with the long ribbons that you sometimes see in gymnastics. (Think Will Ferrell in "Old School"). In another part, there was a guy singing with a bunch of random people who came with instruments such as Chinese violins. In another part, there were roughly 30 couples doing ballroom dancing. In one spot, we saw people standing in formation and doing this exercise in which they balance a ball on a paddle that was like a tennis racket. It was very cool, because they would roll the ball back and forth, flipping in over there backs and through their legs. There were two guys, who had to be in their 70, who were masters. They were passing the ball back and forth, flipping it fluidly behind there backs to each other. It was pretty mesmerizing to watch.

In another part, people were doing hacky-sack. Here, Dan got to join in for a bit (you can see that the guy is holding one of the paddles in his hand).

Here is another picture of the kids in front of the lillypads, but also in front of a large basin of yellow flowers. The kids were very good over the trip to Beijing.

I like the picture below, which just shows the lake full of lillypads.

As we were leaving the park, we noticed people who were writing Chinese characters on the ground in water. They used sticks that had sponges at the end. It was impressive for them to do, because they applied different pressures to make the lines thicker and thinner. This woman was pretty good, doing two lines of characters at once.

After we left the park, we headed home to eat lunch and get Etain and Jiu Jie. We then headed off to do some shopping for the rest of the day, of which I will have pictures in the next blog (which I promise to get too soon). Sorry for the short descriptions of events, but I only had a bit of time to put this together before my class started, which I have to head off to now.

First, though, below is a picture of the Water Cube which I accidentally deleted in the last post.