Trip to China
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Friday, October 22, 2010 Today started at 7:30 with a breakfast buffet in the hotel restaurant. We met our fellow travel mates for an interesting mix of what I consider to be breakfast and dinner foods. You could have salad for breakfast? There were pastries, bacon, pancakes, fried rice, stir fry, and plenty of juice and coffee. We still have not figured out the difference between what is labeled pork and bacon, they both look and taste exactly like bacon. We went to a jade factory and were introduced to the various grades and types of jade. I never realized that you could spend so much on valuable jade jewelry. Our guide talked about how the 2008 Olympic Medals were created with various values of jade surrounding the gold, silver or bronze medals. We were introduced to these beautiful jade crafts called Family Balls. They come in all different sizes, and are basically concentric spheres. Carved on the outer sphere is the Dragon (dad) and Phoenix (mom) intertwined. There are 12 holes in the ball, signifying the 12 months of the year. We purchased one, so on an update we can show you a picture. Since jade is very strong and hard to break, it is the of choice for the ball. The concentric balls move independently of each other and represent generations of the family. We learned about solid jade bangle bracelets and what to look for to find good quality bracelets. When we were given the opportunity to shop, I was able to introduce Tom to my mad bartering skills! We went to the Great wall. The part that Uncle Zhou (our guide and lifeline) hiked took about an hour and was a completely restored section). Since the Great Wall in this section is built on mountains, we hiked up, and up and up. If you ever watched an episode of the Big Bang Theory, Sheldon said that even a 5 mm difference in height on a step will make you trip…this was the reason I tripped up the wall. Actually, the steps were of varying heights. From a few inches (4) to almost 36 inches! At one point it was truly like climbing up a wall and you had to used your hands to grapple up. We visited a Cloisonné Factory, where we learned how the beautiful vases, statues and other wares were created. There are 4 steps; the craziest steps were the gluing of the copper wire on the vase to create almost an outline like a stained glass window effect to give a boundary for the enamel to be hand painted within. Next the “panes” are hand filled with enamel paint, then fired, hand filled with painted then fired, up to 7 times! The Cloisonné Pieces are very detailed! Finally, they are polished to give porcelain looking finish. They are extremely strong and durable and meant to be used. We ate lunch at the Cloisonné factory family style. We went to the Summer Palace, the property is 75 percent covered in water. The Palace is now a park for the people. We were supposed to be done after this and go back to the hotel, but our travel group chose to go to the Beijing Olympic Green. The Olympic Stadium or Bird’s Nest was absolutely amazing in person. Pictures do not do it justice! It is made of very large fresh cut fry looking concrete straw pieces. It was lit up from the inside. We walked to the Swimming Cube. The Cube was very hard for me to capture in a picture. The final adventure of the night was going to Pizza Hut with our travel friends. The menu was partially in English and mostly in Chinese, but had lots of pictures in it. In order to figure out what we wanted, we needed to match symbols throughout the menu with places that we had translations. Our waitress spoke minimal English, so we pointed to what we wanted and smiled a lot. We managed, and had Hawaiian pizza and Pepsi. It tasted just like Pizza Hut back home. It is hard to find Diet Pepsi and Coke here, so I have been drinking regular pop-yum! It will be hard to switch back. We need to not drink the tap water, which includes ice cubes, so our drinks are not as cold as we are used to drinking them. We have found a place to get bottled water, so it has not been too hard. Sleeping here has been hard for me. Our bed is fantastic, but I feel more like I am napping instead of actually sleeping. We have taken our friend Shawna’s advice and not taken naps during the day, no matter how hard it has been. In the evening, we try to stay up as late as possible to force our bodies into the new time zone.

At the Jade Factory At the JuYongGuan Great Wall At the Summer Palace Outside the Cloisonne The Bird's Nest at night The Olympic Green

We are trying to take in as much China as possible, so that we can explain to Eliana details about her birth country. Uncle Zhou (pronounced Joe) said that we were not going to talk about babies until tomorrow. So we have basically been on a vacation, up until this point. More tomorrow…Thank you so much for your guest book comments, it is nice to have communication back home. Also, we have been able to talk to people through the computer too! Finally, please excuse the poor construction and grammar in many of the sentences in my posts. This disclaimer sentence gives me free license for the rest of the trip, so when I am tired and want to share details but don’t feel like proof reading, ok? Love you!

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