After arriving home from my travels up-north (that one was for all you Wisconsinites out there), I had the opportunity to be a tourist in my own town.  A traveling companion from Yinchuan was staying in Beijing for a couple of days and I took that opportunity to join him on some of his wanderings around the capital city. 

After getting to bed pretty late on Wednesday when we got back from Haerbin, we decided that it would be nice to sleep in a bit.  However, that didn’t really happen.  We ended up waking up fairly early and decided to make the most of it by going everywhere in Beijing.  🙂  He had not seen the city yet so I was sort of his tour guide.  Not that he couldn’t have figured it out without me but it helped to have someone who knows the city a little.  We began by visiting the site of the olympics.  It was really fun to hang out with someone who was so laid back about things and didn’t mind what he accomplished during the day.  He didn’t have any particular ‘goals’ to meet and this made the day relaxed and enjoyable!

I had not been there during the day yet, so it was fun to see the buildings in the sunlight!

After the olympics we decided to hit the electronics market.  This is one of my least favorite places in China.  There are way too many people and it gets really annoying when the vendors try to pull you (literally) into their booth to buy something.  The only thing we were looking for was a cord to charge his DS.  He needed one that would work in China.  We found him the charger and then we were off to lunch with my dear friend Fiona.  Lunch was at one of my favorite restaurants near the university where I teach.  The company was great, the food was wonderful!  It was just really nice.  I coudn’t have asked for it to be better.

After lunch, Fiona left and the two of us found ourselves on the subway to the Forbidden City.  We met his friend Zhai Li there and were going to meet a few other Meiguoren so that they could do a tour of the Forbidden City.  They were pretty caught up in their shopping at the pearl market, so instead of touring the Forbidden City, the three of us wandered around Tian’anmen Square, took some pictures and journeyed to meet them at the pearl market.  I think I like this market more than the other markets I’ve been to.  It’s basically the same thing as the silk market but with more pearls and less silk. (I know that last statement seems really obvious, but if you ever come to visit, you’ll know what I mean.)  Below are some of the photos from my wanderings around Tian’anmen Square:

Things I love about this photo: 1) Blue sky! 2) No people 3) Mao's mole 4) The abundance of open space

I had been to Tian’anmen before but it was on a much drearier day.  I could not have asked for a more beautiful sky that day.  It was still bitterly cold out, but I’ll take the blue sky!

Sites from the Square include:

Can you tell from which direction the sun was coming? This was taken on the same day as the previous one but facing southwest. This is Chairman Mao's mausoleum. Affectionately dubbed the 'Maosoleum' by many of my friends. 🙂 Inside you can view Mao's 'body'. I haven't had the desire to go in or the patience to wait in line.

This is facing directly west toward the Great Hall of the People. To my left is the Maosoleum, to my right is Tian'anmen, and behind me is the National Museum of China. It's handy having red as my favorite color. Many, many things are red in China.

I wonder why the flags don't have the stars on them.

This is the Monument to the People's Heroes. The reason I took the picture was because the sun was causing the text on the side of it to glimmer. It was really cool in person but very hard to capture in a photograph!

After the market we went to JingShanGongYuan 竟山公元 which is a little hill (they call it a mountain) in the middle of the city.  From the top of this mountain you can see almost the whole city.  It was dark by the time we got to the south gate but we thought that it would be pretty cool to see the city at night.  The rest of the crew was excited to see the Forbidden City from above because they didn’t get to see it during the afternoon.  I was just excited to see Beijing from up high!  We got to the top (after only about five minutes of climbing) and realized that there were no lights in the Forbidden City.  (We should have known this but none of us thought of it.)  It was really easy to ‘see’ the Forbidden City because it was a giant black square among all of the city lights.  I have a few not-so-great photos from on top of JingShan 竟山 that I will show you below:

Here is a view of the Forbidden City from Jingshan gongyuan. This was at about 7:00 pm. Yes that very large black area is the Forbidden City. Just for future reference, there aren't any lights. 🙂 In the background you can see the lights of the Great Hall of the People.

This is basically the same photo but taken with a much longer shutter. This is so you can see the egg-shaped building in the right of the background of the picture. This building is the Grand National Theater. I fully intend to take in a concert or two at that building! Forbidden City = still dark. Even with a long shutter.

After we climbed back down, we took a bus to the nearest subway station and took the subway to a popular foreigner restaurant for supper.  After that, three of us decided to go have some chuar 串 at a favorite restaurant of mine.  The chuar and the company were both awesome! 

The next day was some more shopping and time with friends.  We visited a scroll shop and I designed my very own scroll.  It is a gift for someone but I won’t say who. 🙂  It was nice to have visitors to the city.  I’m looking forward to the next round of visitors this coming weekend!

The past few days have also been wonderful.  Friday after my guest left, two of my dear Chinese friends came over for some hanging-out/playing a game time.  It was really fun just to visit with them and get to know them better.  They were here until 1:30!  We didn’t even realize that it got that late.  Must have been all of the fun we were having. 🙂 

This is my friend Peter. He was explaining to me why China is called the 'Middle Kingdom'. We were also practicing some Chinese. He was teaching me the characters for the colors and how to say them.

Saturday was spent relaxing around my apartment, editing photos, and updating my blog.  Much needed doing-nothing time. 🙂  That night, I met my friend Kevin for supper and then he came over for a movie.  We got about halfway through the movie and he said, ‘I think you are very tired.’  He was right.  Then, being the gentleman that he is, he decided to leave so that I could go to bed.  The next morning I went to the Haidian Chr**tian Church with three Chinese friends.  It was interesting to listen to the speaker.  After lunch they all wanted to come over to play a game!  We taught Zhai Li how to play Phase 10 because the other two knew how to play already.  The afternoon turned into the evening.  That evening, my plan was to make ‘American’ food for my friend Ross.  So I asked if the the three of them wanted to stick around.  I made them pancakes and scrambled eggs.  Not much, but semi-easy to do.  The food turned out okay and my guests were gracious and said it was ‘hao chi.’ (delicious)  The rest of the evening was spent munching on oranges and playing Catch Phrase, which is hilarious with four Chinese people!! 

This is the church we went to on Sunday morning. After church, the four of us had a good chat about the service.

Hope you all had a refreshing weekend!  HIS blessings to you all!

All is well in chilly Beijing. 

I finished teaching on Saturday of last week to begin six (yes, six) weeks of vacation.  I’ve never had this much time off when it wasn’t summer.  I’m looking forward to the rest and relaxation that a vacation should bring.  My vacation started with a massage after school that night.  It was awesome!  Then it was a movie with a few ladies before hitting the sack.  Sunday was the usual stuff with the group and some time getting ready for my trip to Haerbin. 

The next morning began fairly early with a subway ride to the Beijing Railway Station.  A friend from Yinchuan was going to be traveling with us.  Our train ride was at 7:15 and we wanted to meet a little before that so we wouldn’t miss the train.  We took the fast train (dubbed the “D” train by some FOCers because the number starts with D).  This method of transportation landed us in Haerbin, China at 3:30 pm the same day. Much better than a 19-hour overnight train ride. 

When we arrived, we decided to find our hotel by walking.  We knew it was fairly close to the train station so we just kept walking and asking people where the street was and finally stumbled upon it.  It was fairly nice and reasonably priced.  After checking in and getting situated, we found a restaurant that serves jiaozi.  This is basically a dumpling-like food that has a variety of things inside of it. I had jiaozi with pork and leeks! Yum…

We went back to the hotel and got into our minibus that would eventually drop us off at the snow and ice world.  The lady who was organizing this whole thing was very concerned about us and if we would find her when we were done.  It was all quite hilarious. The ride to the ice/snow world was pretty cool.  The city is dotted with ice sculptures as if to advertize for the large scale festival.  The funniest thing that I saw around the city (and they were everywhere!) were the little ice sculptures of PacMan.  I half expected there to be ghosts nearby but was disappointed when I saw none.  My goal was to capture a pacman in a photo but we were always in a car when we saw them.  So I will only have a mental photo of them…sorry.

We finally arrived at the ice and snow world and was in awe.  It was so large.  I did my best to capture the magnanimity of it all but I do not think the photos do it justice. You will have to take a look for yourself.  Pay attention to the silhouettes in the photos.  This will give you some idea as to how large the ice buildings are.  It was sort of like being in a fantasy world, and in a way, it feels like it was a dream.  I imagine that is how my memories of my year in China will be to me when I come back to the states.  I hope it remains very real but I have heard from others that it feels like a dream.  Below are pictures from the Haerbin Ice and Snow World.  If a picture is worth a thousand words, this is my longest entry. 🙂

The front gate was HUGE! It also changed colors every minute or so.

We were there on one of the warmer nights.

I tried not to think about what it would be like when the spring hits and all of this ice melts.  What do they do with it?  Where does the water go?  And along those lines…where do they get all of the ice to make the sculptures?  I also thought to myself that this sort of activity probably wouldn’t fly in the states.  There would probably be some issue with walking up and down stairs that were made of ice and the thoughts of impending lawsuits because of it.  Some of the staircases had red carpets on them but they were all covered in snow and just as slippery as the ice beneath them.  Thankfully I had my awesome made-in-China boots that had decent traction on the bottoms. That is one thing that astounds me about some Chinese women is that they are not willing to sacrifice fashion for safety or comfort.  Many, many women were wearing boots with heels.  Seriously?!?

Most of the 'structures' could be ascended using the stairs that were made out of ice.

A piece of Egypt right in China!

Along the side of the Sphinx were slides that anyone could slide down.  I chose to refrain from this activity for a couple of reasons.  If I would have had snowpants I might have thought differently about it. 🙂  The Sphinx was one of the smaller structures.  You can see it in a later picture.   

A day wouldn't be complete without beer that tastes like water. I imagine that this particular beer would be no different. 🙂

Harbin beer, the local brew (actually, I’m pretty sure it isn’t locally brewed at all) tastes just like Qingdao beer.  This is one thing China does not do as well as America…and America doesn’t even do it that well.  Sad… 

Here is the "Great Wall of Ice". Down one side of it was a slide. Down the other was a ripcord. Oh, the options!

In addition to the ice madness, every single tree in the park was covered with lights.  There were these willow-looking trees that had lights on them and it reminded me of the movie Avatar.  If only the ground beneath my feet would light up when I took steps. 🙂

The trees that reminded me of Avatar

The ruins of St. Paul College Cathedral in Macau. It was the largest Chr**tian Church in Asia at its time. It was built from 1582 to 1602.

Even now, when I look back at pictures, I am in awe of how large the ice structures are.  This one from Macau was especially exciting for a member of our traveling group who will be going there at the end of February.  Macau is the location of the highest bungee jumping in the world.  I think he’s crazy.

A Russian-type building on top of the Great Wall of Ice.

A shot from on top of the Great Wall

I like this shot a lot because you can kind of see the general splendor of the park and compare the building heights.  On the left side of the picture you can see the beer bottle.  Near it is the Sphinx.  At first, it was annoying for me to have the little silhouetts of people in the pictures but I am glad I have a reference point for the size of things. 

One of the many slides that you could ride. This was a shorter one. It also helped if you were wearing snow pants or another type of slippery pants. Jeans just didn't cut it.

The Colosseum. It was really funny to see the colosseum with Chinese writing on it.

It was neat to see other parts of the world represented in ice.  Most of it was from around China but there were a few other ‘notable’ structures scattered throughout.  One of my least favorite ones was Hollywood.  It was basically a pile of snow with the Hollywood sign on top of it.  There were ice busts of some ‘famous’ American actors in front of this pile of snow but only one name was recognizable to me.  All-in-all, a disappointing representation of America.  I mean, The Statue of Liberty, Mt. Rushmore, The Arch, The Golden Gate Bridge…  Come on, Haerbin!  I would have loved to see those things created in ice.  I kept telling myself that maybe they were featured at previous ice/snow world events.  Let’s hope… It would be sad to think that this is the view of America.  

Tian'anmen/Forbidden City

This one could very well be any type of building like this in China.  I just called it Tian’anmen and the Forbidden City because I live in Beijing.  There are many buildings throughout the country that have this appearance.  This one was cool because of its size also, but not its height.  It was very spread out.   

This was probably my favorite ice building. It was just really beautiful in person.

I loved the white pagodas.  I don’t really know why this one was my favorite but it was just simply beautiful.  Notice the horse-drawn carriage in the foreground of the picture.  We didn’t even ask how much that cost.  There were many other things you could do throughout the park.  One of our group members held a very much sedated white arctic fox.  The fox was pretty cute.  I kind of wanted to drape him around my neck.  Pretty sure that also wouldn’t fly in the states.  PETA would find you.  You could also sit on a yak.  I took a picture of one as the guy was telling me not to take a picture. 🙂 

"I triple dog dare you!" (He thought it would be really funny to stick his tongue to the ice. I thought it would be really funny if it got stuck!)

A piece of Xi'an in Haerbin. I wonder if all the ice warriors are different...

So, I got to see the ice representation of the terracotta warriors before seeing the actual warriors.  I recently found out that there will be chocolate sculptures of famous sites throughout China right here in Beijing next week!  I will have to get a picture of those to add to my collection.

They made the maze way too easy! 🙂

This was pretty cool…except that it was very easy.  The reason it was so easy was that you could see over the walls.  I don’t think they thought this one out fully. Oh well.  In the background of the photo is the main entrance to the ice world.  WOW!  My camera battery died before the night was over.  I don’t think that it likes to be cold.  So, I missed parts of the park.  One structure worth noting was the giant chessboard.  A traveling companion took a picture of me with a few of the chess pieces.  I will share them with you when I get them from him. 

At the appointed time, actually about 15 minutes early (we were very cold), we found our minibus driver and we waited for a while for the Chinese members of our group to get to the vehicle.  The did not show up and off we were!  Hmm…  We made it back to the hotel and met a student of mine for a snack before bed.

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The next morning we grabbed some noodles for breakfast.  (Never thought I would say that…) After breakfast we decided we wanted to visit St. Sophia Church, and as it was a bit of a hike, we wanted to grab a cab to get there.  Traveling with five people is sort of an inconvenience.  You always have to take two cabs.  So I said, “why don’t we just flag down the guy in the van.”  I didn’t actually think it would work or be possible but he pulled over and offered to take us for Y15.  This was a great price because it would have been that much or more for us to take two taxis.  We climbed into his van and immediately there were cops everywhere!  WHAT?!?  They got the guy out of his van and took him aside to question him.  In the meantime, another one came and talked to the person in our group whose Chinese is the best.  He asked her if we had given him any money.  Her answer was that we had not given him any money.  It was truthful for the moment.  A few minutes later, they let him back into his van and we were on our way.  Apparently the cops watch the illegal cab activity near that hotel.  I imagine that as soon as he dropped us off he went to find a place to throw up.  He informed us on the ride to the church that the fine for this sort of thing is Y20,000.  Needless to say, we gave him a little extra for his trouble. 

After that little episode, we were at St. Sophia Church.  There was a big square with many people doing exactly what we were doing…taking pictures.  We heard multiple times that the inside of a church didn’t look like the inside of a church at all.  So, we didn’t go inside the church but stayed outside around the church and in the square next to the church.  A couple of things that I witnessed as I was hanging out by the church:  many, many pigeons that would fly around the church at a whistle command, a group of four women who were obviously traveling together (I knew this because of their matching red boots.  Why one would wear matching red boots is beyond me.  This, however, happens very often in China. Not necessarily matching boots, but matching in general.), and another group of women traveling together. (They were wearing white boots. Where are our brains people?!?)

A dreary day at St. Sophia Church

This is one view of the church.  We didn’t spend too much time there and afterward we were off to meet my student for lunch.  He was in Haerbin on business and asked us to meet him at his ‘company.’  Well, we were unaware that his ‘company’ rents an apartment because there are only four people there and it also provides housing for them.  We met him there and after a cup of coffee we were off to lunch.  What business lunch would be complete without baijiu? Not ours!  Baijiu is literally ‘white alcohol’.  Some Chinese people call it white wine.  It is not wine, it is pretty potent, and it is not at all good tasting.  I could not even finish my half-a-miniature-Chinese-glass of baijiu.  Yuck!  It would have been impolite to not finish it so while they weren’t looking, one of the others drank the rest of it for me. 🙂

After lunch my student was able to hang out with us the rest of the day.  We went to a pedestrian street near the center of town.  Many ice sculptures adorned the streets.  We tried the famous Haerbin ice cream and enjoyed Russian tea at a nearby tea house.  After it got dark, we went to Stalin Park which is the location of the Flood Monument.  In 1957 there was a devastating flood and the monument was built in 1958 to commemorate the people who helped.  Below is a picture at night.

Fonghongbei Statue in Stalin Park

We had a relaxing evening in the hotel and a walk around the city the next morning before heading out of Haerbin.  During our walk around the city we found three churches right next to each other.  This was kind of cool.  On one of them was this sign:

🙂

Other sights that were fun to see in the city were these:

This reminded me of that game where you have to rearrange the vehicles to try to get one out! Traffic was worse in Haerbin than in Beijing.

I've seen cars park on the sidewalk before but this is ridiculous! 🙂

This man was sweeping the snow with a broom about two feet long. I could not resist photographing him. He caught me!

This man was popping popcorn.

These people are removing the snow from the square near St. Sophia Church. Notice the tools they have. Behind me are their brooms. I think they might be there a while.

This is what most of the snow in Haerbin looked like throughout the city. It was very dirty and slippery.

We got on the train back to Beijing and got back to my apartment at a little after midnight.  All-in-all, a good trip.  It is nice to be relaxing at home though! 🙂  HIS Blessings to you all!

I cannot believe that it has been three weeks since my last update. Much has happened in those three weeks and I will do my best to share the details with you.

We had our Christmas party with a lot of Chinese friends in attendance.  Actually, we had two Christmas parties: a children’s Christmas party and an adult Christmas party.  For both of these parties, skits were performed of the Christmas story.  The children performed theirs and we, the foreign teachers performed for the adults.  I was the narrator and very thankful for it because I was losing my voice. Acually, I can’t remember the last time I had a voice that worked properly for more than a few hours at a time.  The party was fun and six of my Qinghua University students came to the party.  After the party, one of them came up to me and said that he learned a lot.  🙂 Oh, just thinking about them makes me miss them even more.

The week before Christmas was filled with shopping for my secret santa gift and my white elephant gift.  In our group, we exchanged names a few weeks before Christmas.  I had one of the guys who was really easy to shop for. I was disappointed in myself that I wasn’t a bit more creative with his gift, but I did get most of the items on his list.  I was told the white elephant gift was supposed to be something crazy/useless/interesting/found/etc.  My white elephant gift was my old bike seat that was hanging on my wall (and is now back on the wall miraculously!), a gaudy Chinese decoration, the Hannah Montana movie bought for 5 kuai on the street and another item that I can’t remember.  Obviously the gift was not the greatest if even I cannot remember what it was.  I feel bad for the person who got it.  At least she liked the movie. 🙂  FYI – the secret santa gift that I received was a Qinghua (Tsinghua) University sweatshirt, a talking Chinese calculator :), and a ‘bead’ curtain.  There is a story for the ‘bead’ curtain.

Early in September, one of the male teachers told me that it would be really awesome if I made him a bag for his BOOKS that he buys each week from Ch**ch.  He buys a box each week and transports them to my apartment where we have our weekly service.  These are for distribution to our new Chinese friends who are beginning to study the GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD.  However, each box is marked as to what it is and he wanted to be a bit more discreet about it on his way to our place.  On our way to lunch the same day he asked me to make him his bag, I said, ‘you should make me a bead curtain.’  So, he said that if I make him a bag he would make me a bead curtain. So the deal was on.  I, not wanting to wait for anything, immediately sought out a way to ‘make’ this bag.  I took the cheater way out and had a tailor make the bag.  I picked out the fabric and that was that. When I got it back two days later I realized that I had not asked about handles. 🙁 hmmm…….  So I took the bag to a different tailor (they seem to be everywhere here…thankfully so) and had him add handles.  I ‘asked’ him (by asked I mean I pointed and smiled and shrugged…the usual) to put buttons on the bag so it would close.  We finally understood each other and I left. Thirty seconds later, he called me back into his shop and showed me some Velcro! What a great idea! I didn’t even think of velcro but it was perfect.  I came back later that day and the bag was finished.  I gave the bag to this teacher and then told him I was looking forward to getting my bead curtain.

After a while, I sort of forgot about the bead curtain.  This person, however, did not and ended up drawing my name for the secret santa exchange.  He also knows of my love of playing cards.  I have a feeling this gift took a LONG time to make and was probably mildly frustrating. I had a picture of it but I think I accidentally deleted it. 🙁 I’ll take another one and post it later. I do think it was one of the most thoughtful and creative gifts I’ve ever gotten though! 🙂

I was blessed with quite a lot of time off during the Christmas holiday.  The FOC school was closed for two weekends (three weeks) because two of the three teachers went to America for Christmas.  I enjoyed my free time and used it to get together with friends.  I also got an unexpected week off at Sinopec during the week of Christmas.  My students had to learn about their exam while I was enjoying my freedom.  That was also my last week with my Qinghua students.

I attended the Qinghua Christmas party on Christmas Eve night before our Compline service.  This was probably one of the most interesting Christmas parties I have been too.  I brought two of my American friends because Ms. Fan told me to bring as many as possible. 😉  One of the things they had us do was play musical chairs.  However, there was no music.  This game consisted of the three of us walking around two chairs starting when one of the men clapped once and stoping when he said stop. We really didn’t know what was going on and just sort of went with it.  We then ate an abundance of fruit, dumplings, nuts, and candy. We also had beer with them.  They kept trying to get us to drink more. ‘Amber, where’s your drink?’ ‘Amber, cheers!’ Thankfully the beer in China tastes like water and makes me full before it does anything else. As my friend and I were leaving the party, they tried to get me to sing for them.  I kept refusing and said I had to leave. Man, they are insistent.  I finally got away, without singing, and went to our Compline service.  Not a party I will soon forget! 🙂

Christmas day was full of singing and reading the BOOK! We had Mexican food for our Christmas dinner.  I have never had tacos for Christmas but it was a nice change from Chinese food.  We exchanged gifts and had our white elephant exchange.  Christmas night was spent hanging out and chatting with American friends.  I received an interesting gift from my friend Kevin.  I had someone take a picture of us at the Christmas party and I emailed it to him.  I did not realize that he would make it into a coffee mug that reveals the picture when there is a hot liquid in it! 🙂  It was also a really thoughtful gift. 

The day after Christmas was the birthday of one of the teachers. (Coincidentally, also the birthday of Chairman Mao…hmmm.)  As this teacher hates being sung to, she wanted to get away from the crazies who like to sing and celebrate birthdays. There is no better place than the Great Wall.  We went to a new section of the Wall this time: Badaling 八达岭.  Little did she know that a Chinese friend that came along planned the whole day with much singing of the ever popular happy birthday song…in many languages! 🙂  We took a bus to Badaling.  Most people would not have gone to the wall that day because it was SUPER cold outside. We, of course, were crazy.  We took wine and a bunch of snacks and had a picnic on the wall!  We also had noise makers and santa hats and sang happy birthday many times. 😉  The birthday girl, dressed in her commie coat enjoyed it…even if there was singing. 😀  On our way to the wall that day, we met three foreigners trying to get to the wall also.  We all ended up on the same bus and we ran into them a few times on the wall! 

After we got back to Beijing, we went to an Indian restaurant for supper.  The other three foreigners came with us to supper and another one of my Chinese friends (Ross–a student of mine) came along also.  Supper was fun, drinks and tiramisu afterward was also fun!  I had quite a bit of time off during the last week of December and spent that time with friends and taking pictures and such.  It was really quite a blessing to have this time off.

For New Years Eve, the single girls (and one married girl) went to a Persian restaurant for a lovely supper. It was delightful!  The plan was to go back to one of their apartments and play some games while enjoying a few cocktails.  I got sidetracked because a Chinese friend sent me a message during supper to see if I wanted to get a drink with him that evening.  I figured I could take an hour or so break from the ladies and rejoin them after meeting a friend.  When I rejoined the ladies there were no games but just good conversation. We made it to midnight (a first for me in many years!) and then went our separate ways.

I go back to teaching again at the FOC school.  I have two Saturdays left before the break.  I’m looking forward to the time away even though I just had time away.  I’m rethinking my enthusiasm (if you can actually do that) for this school.  I really like my 7th grade class but the 3rd grade class is more of a burden and a stress for me than a joy.  I keep trying to find the small blessings in this class but the students wear on me after a while.  Pr*y for me and for my 3rd graders.

As I ride my bike through the streets of Beijing and laugh at the oddities that are everywhere, I try to make mental notes of what I should write in my blog.  I think, ‘I have to make a note of that.’  But then when I sit down to write it, I can’t remember most of the things that crack me up from the day.  I should really write them all down somewhere.  For example, Snow Removal in China.  Apparently this is the most snow that Beijing has gotten in a very long time, if ever.  I picked a great year to come to China. 🙂  So, in a city where they are not used to removing snow from the roads, they just put it off.  And when they get around to it, they use many people with foot-wide shovels to clean off the roads.  It’s hilarious to see this happen.  I guess it’s the government’s way of providing jobs for their people.  But, it does take forever!  They are currently (I mean right now at 9:30 pm on Friday) cleaning off the streets that are going to have snow on them again tomorrow.  This snow came almost a week ago.  It makes for really interesting biking also. I try to avoid it. 

Another thing that made me giggle today was the nut stand in an alley near one of the apartments.  There was nobody manning the stand and there were many small birds enjoying the free meal.  🙂  The cars that drive down the side roads the wrong way…this is actually more of a frustration but sometimes it’s funny.  Traffic is mostly a frustration.  I will try to keep a better record of life’s little hilarities so that I might share them with you in the future. 

Life continues to be cold here.  I’m looking forward to the travels that I have coming up. I’m planning to go to Harbin which is in the far north part of China.  Apparently, I am not cold enough in Beijing.  The plan is to stay there for only two or three days to take in the snow and ice festival.  Google it. It’s supposed to be incredible! I’ll post pictures!   Hopefully I will go to Hainan Island sometime in February to warm up a bit, then it’s off to Hong Kong for the FOC retreat.  I will try to have another entry before I leave for my travels.  It’s becoming more difficult to keep up with it. 

I will post pictures soon!  May HE continue to bless you and your family in the New Year! GB!