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!!!