The Goat, Tombs, Walls, Holidays & Guck no more...

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!! 

It is hard to believe that 2014 is over.  SO much has happened during this crazy but wonderful year of the Horse!!  Time flies and yet drags on.  It flies by overall, but drags on as we anticipate getting home to see family and friends!!!!

Now we are entering the year of the Goat!  Here is a little info that may interest you:

Ming Tombs & Great Wall

Before the weather turned too cold, I organized a little out & about for 14 of us to visit the Ming Tombs (a collection of imperial mausoleums built by the Ming Dynasty emperors) and after that, a trip to the Great Wall - Mutianyu.  It was the most perfect day ever!  A beautiful blue sky and just a little crisp, late Fall weather.  On the Great Wall, we hiked and hiked until we came to the part of the wall that is called, “the wild wall.”  This is where the restored portion ends and the years of deteriorated wall begins.  It is a bit rougher hiking with lots of overgrowth, missing steps and broken side walls dropping off to dizzying heights, but it is AWESOME!!!  We love hiking the wild portion of the wall! 

MING TOMBS     

GREAT WALL - MUTIANYU

The Nativity & Christmas

We had a unique experience the Saturday before Christmas.  One of our Chinese teacher friends and her 11 yr old daughter Grace invited us to attend and watch her performance in the Nativity play at the big North Cathedral (Church of the Saviour) here in Beijing.  The cathedral was built in 1694 and is pretty amazing.  The Nativity play was awesome and kicked off the season with a great reminder of the true meaning of Christmas.   

Although we had to work through the Christmas week, we did have our regular Thursday off, which just happened to fall on Christmas Day!!!  Lucky us!  On Christmas Eve we went straight from school by train for 1.5 hrs to pick up our American smoked ham.  Yay!  It was absolutely delicious, along with all of our traditional favorite foods.  We had 14 people for dinner in our little apt and once again, they ate and ate until most of the food was gone. We especially love feeding the young Princeton In Asia teachers, all who are about 22-25 yrs old and love a home-cooked meal whenever they can.  We have a great mix of friends here from the young pups to our oldest friend who is 82, a retired Chinese teacher that still lives here on the old campus with his dog, Tony Blair.  His previous dog had a funny  name also but I can’t remember it right now.

Wind, Cold & CDC Text

The wind in Beijing is a double-edged sword.  It cuts like a knife and makes a cold day even colder (25-34F), however, it also blows all the guck out of the air and we rarely curse the wind, but sometimes while walking my 20 minutes to the train station after classes with the wind blowing me off my feet (usually 20 mph) and cutting through my body and freezing my ears off, I do quietly complain to myself.

Gotta love random text messages, especially when they come from the Center of Disease Control (CDC).  I received this one the other day:

“As the weather turns cold, the high incidence of the disease has entered the winter season. Beijing CDC to remind you, seek immediate medical attention after the illness, medical science, civilization and medical attention when medication is reasonable, safe, timely and appropriate.”

Technology & Air Filters

I’ve decided to rename the modern day technology that allows us to receive email, surf the net for any random piece of information we desire, Google any topic or recipe, connect visually with family & friends from far across the seas, download music and other entertainment, etc.  I hereby now declare that the wonderful, functioning, reliable modern technology that we used to know and love in the U.S., called the internet, is now more accurately renamed to the “intermittent net”, which reflects the most infuriating situation we have here in China…NO INTERNET!!  We have had a horrible time with any stable signal for the last couple of months.  Very frustrating.

After a couple of months here in Beijing and noticing that the air quality seems to have a direct effect on Jordan’s ability to shake a nasty cough, I finally did what I should have done the first day we moved to China 1.5 yrs ago and bought some air purifying-filtering machines (i.e. a small fan with a heavy duty filter strapped to it).  After only one week of running them 24/7 in the apt, we noticed there was:

1. A LOT of GUCK gathering in the filters and turning them black, giving us a horrible feeling about what we had been breathing before putting these filters in place, and…

2. We noticed a unique symbol developing, similar to one of Jordan’s favorite modes of transportation. We definitely miss the Harley!!!

Alternate Entertainment

Since we have little to no internet (see previous comment on “intermittent-net), we have opted for a few more out & about types of entertainment.  At the beginning of December we went to the theater to see “Sound Of Music”, which was done by the London Theater Troup.  It was wonderful. Then last Saturday we went to see Riverdance… something we have ALWAYS wanted to see!  It definitely did not disappoint.  It was absolutely phenomenal!!!   

Well, that is about all the news for now.  We leave tomorrow morning for the north country to see Harbin and the renowned Ice Festival for 3 days.  Then we get our fannies back to Beijing and fly out Monday morning for the U.S.A.!!!!!!!  Wahoo!!!!!!  Can’t wait!!!

APEC, Guilin, Thanksgiving & a Mirror

In November we were given an unexpected break for 6 days!  Beijing hosted the  26^th annual gathering of APEC Leaders (Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation) from around the world.  APEC is the premier Asia-Pacific economic forum.  Their primary goal is to “support sustainable economic growth and prosperity in the Asia-Pacific region, champion free and open trade and investment, encourage economic technical cooperation while enhancing human security,” amongst other things.  Sounds pretty cool huh!  We were just happy this was the year for it to be held in Beijing because that meant VACATION time!!!    

As you may be aware, we have a little bit of a smog/horrible air problem here in China.  There are days we can literally “taste” the air.  Not good.  It is generally worse in the winter months due to the fact that they burn coal to heat the city. So, in order to have favorable and cleaner air during the APEC meetings, various measures were taken to ensure a “good showing” of the capital city!  Factories were closed down, transportation was restricted on certain days for certain vehicles/license #s, etc.  This was again really good news for us as we experienced some beautiful blue skies and fresh air.  Before the week was over, *netizens coined the phrase “APEC Blue” to satirically refer to “something that is fleeting.”  We all knew the “Apec Blue” skies wouldn’t last, but it was GREAT while it did!!!

*net·i·zen - a user of the Internet, especially a habitual or avid one.

GUILIN

This little  surprise holiday gave us an opportunity to take another quick trip within China.  However, I had to get very creative with our mode of travel because as soon as this holiday was announced, we were competing with 1.3 billion other people to get flights!  Argh!  But not to worry…creativity is my middle name.  So, together with one other couple from here in Beijing (they teach at a different university but we get together frequently), we took the bullet train from Beijing to Xi’an, stayed one day in Xi’an, visited all of our favorite places and ate lots of our favorite foods,  then flew from Xi’an to Guilin the next evening.  Guilin is one of the most beautiful places in China and a top tourist attraction.

We boarded a boat early the next morning for a trip down the Li River (漓江 - Lí Jiāng).  The river trip took us 52 miles down the river to Yangshuo, another beautiful location.  Here are some of my pictures of the cool mountains!

                                               

                                               

After arriving in Yangshuo, we boarded a bus that took us high and deep into the mountains to the Longsheng Rice Terraces (龙胜梯田).  This place is amazingly beautiful!!  We then hiked for an hour to our hotel that was deep in a village in the top of the mountains.  We literally hiked up into the clouds!  The people that live in these villages farm the terraced fields.  The terraced fields are built along the slope winding from the riverside up to the mountain top, no space wasted.  They plant rice in the terraced fields.  It is absolutely breathtaking any time of year.  The terraced fields were mostly built about 650 years ago.  This area is called Longji, which means Dragon’s Back. 

                                     

Hiking up, up, up to our hotel in the village!  We went hiking the next morning for a couple of hours to see the beautiful terraces.  There were moments when the fog would clear and we could see everything.  Then a minute later it would roll back in and become very misty and serene! 

A picture in front of a picture of the terraces, just in case it was too foggy to see anything.  Which it wasn’t!  We had occasional glimpses of incredible views!

                                                

Beautiful fields after the harvest.  Kind of looks like snow but it is water.

We wanted to do a hike to Half Moon Arch but it was raining and very slippery.  Plus, you can see from this sign that they really don’t want you to climb it!

THANKSGIVING

We had a great Thanksgiving!  We tried to create a little bit of “home” by making all of our family favorite traditional foods.  It took a bit of hunting and searching all over the city of Beijing to find the necessary "Thanksgiving" ingredients, but we finally rounded it all up and in the end, it was pretty close to perfect!!!  We had about 14 people (CFAU foreign teachers and Chinese friends) here for Thanksgiving dinner.  Everyone ate and ate so I think it was a success!  

Out of the mouth of babes... 

Last week at church the Primary teacher was asking the kids what the Wise Men brought to the baby Jesus.  One kid said, “Silver!”  Teacher said, “Close!  It was gold but maybe there was some silver also.”  Another child said, “Frankincense.”  Teacher said, “Right!”  Last child said, “A mirror!”  Teacher chuckled.  I laughed out loud!