The GREAT wall

We finally made it to the Great Wall. It was surreal and very "Lord of the Rings" with so many watch towers. There are many places where you can see the wall, but we decided on the section where we could take a cable car up and then a zip line down and a final boat ride to the end. Layers of the wall had been chipped away by time, so in many cases we scrambled our way up or carefully managed our way down. The scenery surrounding the wall is equally spectacular. This is a short video of the trip.

Tiananmen and Wangfujing Jie

On May 27th we visited most of the political famous sites in Beijing, like Tiananmen square. The most interesting event here were the school children using part of this historical site as their own personal playground. Leave it to children to entertain themselves wherever they may be. Oh, make sure to check our most recent flickr photos, you'll find LIVE scorpions on a stick. Sorry, we are not so brave to try these!

Beijing

Jade Yim, a scholar in Beijing organized a pre-Olympic event for us to attend. Thank you Jade! We were able to visit the famous Bird's Nest stadium in Beijing to witness the Good Luck Beijing games. On May 25th we attended several events including the women's triple jump, men's high jump, men's and women's 800 meter relay and others. How exciting!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/25321602@N03/

P.S. Please let us know if you are able to see these photos on flickr

杰妮骑自行车 - Jenny riding a Bike

As mentioned in a previous post, we rode bikes while in Suzhou. This was a video I took of Jenny with my cell phone. Looks professional, doesn't it.

Nanjing

All this week we have been in Nanjing with the Little family. They have 3 brilliant children and have shown us so much hospitality and kindness. We have really enjoyed our time here. We were fortunate to meet a 2009 scholar who will also be studying in Nanjing. Nanjing was once the capital of China. Nanjing is not like other cities we have seen with giant skyscrapers, instead there are giant parks dedicated to famous people in China's history. We visited Sun-Yat-Sun's tomb, the father of modern China. We saw the first bridge over the Yangtze River. Notice the Russian style. I also visited an International School and witnessed firsthand International education in China. Tim pretended he was Buddha again, since the real Buddha went out for lunch and all the other Budda's were decapitated. Check out our photo stream on flikr, the lick is below. http://www.flickr.com/photos/25321602@N03/

Shanghai and Suzhou

Hi,

We are here in Shanghai which is supposed to be a futuristic city, but really we only saw one building that looked like it was from the Jetson's cartoon. The skyline is beautiful at night, as we were able to see the entire city from the top of Jin Mao building, the highest hotel in the world! (It starts on the 54th floor) We are staying with the Sullivans who are great hosts and we are really enjoying getting to know them. In Shanghai, we were able to find an excellent Mexican restuarant called Zapata's which is really hard to find, so we took advantage of the opportunity to have some real Tex-Mex. We went to a museum where we found foot binding shoes and instruments used to conduct foot binding on children as young as 5 or 6 years old. Notice how tiney these shoes are, now women here just wear high heels. Suzhou is 45 minutes from Shanghai, so we decided to take a day trip today. We zipped around town on rented bikes. Here are few pics from this trip. http://www.flickr.com/photos/25321602@N03/

Enjoy!

Putuoshan II

Today is our last day in Putuoshan. Thank goodness there was no earthquake or we might have fallen off this little island. We explored half of it today. In fact we enjoyed a vegetarian meal for 10 yuan, a little over $1.00 via communal dining inside the Puji temple. It wasn't the best meal, but hey it was really cheap! Today's Chinese word is ugly, 丑pronouced chŏu (3rdtone) because today we saw three pretty ugly dudes. We're not sure why the turtle wanted to stare so long.

普陀山 Putuoshan

Today we are in Putuoshan. 普陀山 It is home to one of the 4 sacred Buddist mountains in China. Putuoshan is an island with hundreds of hidden adventures waiting for Tim to find them. We just arrived so tommorow will do more cave exploring and beach combing. Today, Tim talked face to face with a monk! We also found a well of immortality. I guess we would have lived forever, but we won't drink the water in China. Here is a few highlights from this excursion....enjoy!

天台山 TianTaiShan

Today we are in 天台山TianTaiShan (Heavenly Terrace Mountain). This is a like a playground with millions of winding stairs that lead to dragon pools, waterfalls and exquisite views of the mountain side. We witnessed a natural bridge over the 石梁飞瀑 Flying Waterfall. Happy Mother's Day Mom! Love, Tim and Jenny

Torch Relay

The torch ran by our house today! We were very excited to see it. We waited several hours until the torch finally came by. We stood from the 5th floor of our building, since there were a lot of people around. People shouted, 加油！
This literally translates to "add oil," but it really means give it the gas, or let's go!
Yeah China!

Milk Boxes

It is really difficult to get whole milk, or rather cow's milk without traveling to find it. This is our best option, soy milk. It comes in several flavors including Taro, Chocolate (Tim's favorite), Vanilla (Also Tim's favorite), Regular (Jenny's favorite). This is our commercial advertising the milk boxes.
Jade, Akiko and Jenny