Saturday Excursion

Saturday we went to Helin, an hour car ride south of Hohhot, for Dave to teach English to some school-age children. I guess requests of this sort are often made of visiting foreign experts, and this one came from a newly-made acquaintance, Lily. She is headmistress of this school where children learn music (from her—she’s a music student at IMNU) and kung fu (from her father). They also learn English when they can get it, which is where we come in. Lily wanted to pay Dave for an every-Saturday gig and he not only declined the pay, but also spent a long time trying to impress upon her that he doesn’t have every Saturday available. I don’t know if he has won that battle yet—literally 20 minutes of the car ride out there was spent going back and forth between Lily and Dave (with Joe, Lily’s English teacher, interpreting)—but both sides certainly tried their best. For now, we’ll probably go out for the next couple of Saturdays, and then we plan a weekend to Beijing.

Anyway, the drive out was fairly uneventful, although the scenery was quite wonderful. A constant in looking around us is the stark dichotomy between poverty and wealth. On one side of the road there are little brick “houses”, not much more than stable-size rooms, surrounded by dirt and piles of broken brick. Many such areas also have long garden plots, sandwiched between more brick buildings. On the other side of the street, as one extreme example, is the extensive housing dedicated to the managers of the milk plant—Mengnu (literally meaning “the cow from Inner Mongolia”) which provides milk, yogurt, frozen yogurt, etc. throughout China. Mongolians drink milk, which is not common in the rest of China. While we miss our cheese, we are lucky to have this much available.)—boasting a swimming pool, large swathes of grass (apparently imported from Oregon, since grass of the lawn sort is not native to China), basketball courts, clean streets and modern apartment buildings. The factory itself, which we passed on the way to Helin, is large and impressive, very modern, with a grassy area in front and bucolic black and white cows munching under the factory sign. There are tour buses parked in front (like the Darigold factory in Sunnyside, Dave remarked… yes, but on a much larger scale.) and all the signs of modern society. Great contrast to the other side of the street, like I said.

But, the air cleared up, the countryside stretched out, and while being much greener, it is still quite treeless and very reminiscent of home. We arrived in the town, no idea how big it is, although it is safe to say that it is much smaller than Hohhot. We pulled up to Lily’s school and were dumbstruck to find a bunch of kids perched in front of their electric pianos on one side of the door, and rows of little kids in kung fu outfits on the other side. A long red banner stretched over the top of the entryway, saying in Chinese and below it in English: Welcome Dr. David to our school.

The full force of what it meant to them for us to come out really hit then, and we were glad that we went, and took it seriously. The musicians played something very familiar, I almost want to say something from Carmen, and then the kung fu kids performed. It was really very moving and I teared up and tried not to show it because I don’t know how that would be perceived, but I never can keep from crying when kids perform something they have worked hard on—it is such a pure effort, beautiful and earnest.

They escorted us into the school, sat us down and provided us with cold bottled water and slices of watermelon. It is very hot here right now, easily in the 90s everyday and nothing is air conditioned so this was truly a welcome indeed. After the refreshments Lily and Joe showed Dave the props he could use to teach English. Obviously, neither Dave nor myself have done anything of this sort, but he did a marvelous job of winging it, and the kids, ranging from very small, maybe 5 or 6? to 15 sat in perfect graduated order, smallest to biggest, watching, laughing and participating.

The hour of teaching passed, I made a feeble attempt to tell the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Joe translating, and then Lily, Joe, Lily’s father, who was only introduced to us as Grandfather, the t.v. camera lady (yes, the local t.v. station filmed the whole thing), and another teacher at the school whisked us off to a restaurant for an incredible lunch. I can’t even begin to list everything we ate, but we were so grateful to eat something that seemed familiar in flavors and truly satisfied us to the core. I guess that statement won’t entirely make sense yet, as I haven’t written my post on food yet, which is epic and constantly evolving, and really will be forthcoming soon. Suffice it to say that it was a wonderful meal, the company enjoyable, the pee-geo (beer) and green tea flowing, and even little Gregor Samsa (am I spelling that right?) wiggling helpless on his back on the floor beneath my chair couldn’t alter how good it all felt.

With Lily

With Lily's father

Earlier, at the school, Dave looked up from the street and saw a hillside dotted with the tops of pagodas. Upon asking Lily he found out that it was a park filled with Buddhist pagodas. Both Lily and her father are Buddhist and agreed to take us up there after lunch. Now, we thought this was just a little hike up the hill to see a couple of pagodas, but it was much more than that. Lily and Joe insisted on our all retiring to a hotel (!) after lunch to rest before going to the South Mountain, for that it turns out is the name of that hillside park. We tried to talk them out of it, their having already paid for lunch but they would not allow us to pay for anything. The Chinese sense of hospitality runs very deep and in this case could not be swayed an iota, even when the enormity of our request to visit the park finally dawned on us. At one point at lunch, when Dave and Joe were debating the after-lunch nap, Joe finally ended the discussion by saying “Chinese custom”, both in regards to the nap, and I think probably also to underscore the fact that they were paying and that was that. We couldn’t say anything more, and submitted ourselves to being stretched out of our (read: my) comfort zone. Once the trip to the park was decided, even without our realizing what we were asking, everything else fell into place and we no longer had a say in the matter.

And so, off to the hotel we went. The room was quite clean, with four little beds, a fan (hooray!), and a t.v. Best of all, though, for the kids were the two little kittens that they got to keep in the room while they “rested”. I think Joe slept well next door, Dave tried to, and I lay on the bed and listened to the traffic and the kids.

An hour and a half later, we were off to the park. After a first attempt to get into the park was aborted by an angry guard on a motorcycle (understand, at this point we just thought we were going up a hill to visit some pagodas, we didn’t know it was a park you must pay to get into), we walked a long way around, crossed a bridge over a partially dry river bed, saw a man and his little girl walk their pig around a building, and came to the gated entrance to the park. Oh my, now we understood what we had asked of Lily and her father and we really felt very stupid and uncomfortable because it is a park you must pay entrance to and we knew we wouldn’t be allowed to pay. They even bought water for us. There was nothing for it but to go through with the plan, for to change it or insist that we pay would be very rude. It turns out the park is some kind of Buddhist Disneyland—no more monks or working temple it appears (although I may be wrong)—where all the pagodas and a beautiful temple, large museum building, Mongolian pony rides, motorized carts (just like at Disney, to take you from the parking lot to the entrance, but here to take you over miles of park), and other sites awaited us. Of course we couldn’t ask to take a cart, because they would have to pay, despite Grace’s ankle and Samuel running out of steam and the heat the heat, oh the heat, so we walked.

After climbing a bazillion stairs, what a view!

The temple structure

Guan Yin: Bodhisattva of Compassion

All the trees have only recently been planted, and there are many of them, as well as dirt paths, paved paths, beautiful vistas, statues, a monument to money (!! Really—Chinese coins and in the middle a 100 yuan statue near a statue of a shell, the first Chinese currency), and lots and lots of pagodas, all intricately painted in bright colors. We only walked through a little, though I guess enough to get Lily’s money’s-worth, and then we got lost trying to get out. After lots of walking we finally found the original “sneaky” entrance we had first attempted, scaled down the hill, whooped with victory,

said hello to the sheep, and walked back to the school, pausing only to take a picture of the first-ever double humped camel I have ever seen.

Foot-weary, sweaty, tired (it was by now about 6:30 p.m.), we ate a little more watermelon, drank some water, and started for home. Two buses and a comfy car ride later, and we were back home, grateful to have a home to come to after such a long day. Samuel started the day out not wanting to go, not wanting to take kung fu (as part of an exchange for English lessons), homesick and grouchy, and surprisingly, after 12 hours of adventure he was happy, perky, and ready to take kung fu. Grace isn’t sure about music lessons. I know she’d like kung fu but her pesky ankle is just not ready for it. As always, though, Grace was a great trooper, much more so than her mother, and although we had to carry her for large portions of the hike, she really enjoyed herself. It has taken me two days to digest the whole affair. I’m not sure I’m ready yet to go back, because it is so mentally exhausting dealing with people, language, all the sights and sounds and smells, but I know that come next Saturday we’ll all be on our way again.

P.S. I don't know if these posts are coming out all right. I still can't seem to access comments--Does everything look okay?

One More Bump in the Road: Adventures in Chinese Bureaucracy

Yesterday (Thursday), Dave had a very productive meeting with Mrs. Wu. He found out that he’ll be teaching 2 junior faculty seminars on American history per week until Sept. 10 (after which he’ll have one seminar and also teach three classes of English daily). He actually taught his first seminar that afternoon. He said it was the first time in the last week that he felt truly at home, since he was in a classroom. This great bit of movement forward (Dave hadn’t heard anything up until then) was tempered by the news that we had to have a physical exam and visit the Public Security Bureau Friday (today) morning. What???? It is still vividly fresh in our memory the day that we received some very cryptic looking paperwork back in March, accompanied by the directive that we all had to get physicals NOW in order to get the visa process moving. Or actually, we had to send the results of our physicals, along with our criminal records, to Inner Mongolia so an official letter could be generated, which we then had to send to SF with our passports, to get the visas. Phew. Given all of that, we were really bummed out about having to have physicals here—what in the world could that mean? Did I have to take my clothes off in a foreign country where I didn’t speak the language? Did the kids have to do this, too?—especially since we thought we had done that all already. We did our best to get out of it but to no avail. The most we heard was that the kids didn’t have to have physicals. The silver lining, so to speak.

And so, bright and early this morning, we fed the kids their breakfast but Dave and I had to fast, then we trooped down the stairs at 8 a.m. to see our escorts. He asked Mr. Song yesterday for someone to come with us who speaks English, and we got that, in the person of Athena (I cannot even begin to attempt her Chinese name, but really, she looks like an Athena and is the sweetest, kindest person ever), a faculty member in the International Exchange department. I was really, really dreading the whole experience and the kids were freaked out just because. Remarkably, and I should remember this so that I can spare myself future stomach aches over matters I cannot control, the whole process was pretty painless. The clinic they took us to was clean and modern looking-- big relief and a further indication of the various unknown prejudices that lurk in my deepest parts, for I was sure it would be dark and scary and dirty—and actually, being foreigners we were pushed through to the front of the line in every room we visited. And where did we go? We first visited the x-ray room for a chest x-ray… See the scary picture below.

That’s right, no lead apron, no closed door, nothing. Ugh. Then we went to the Surgery room, which really was just where a lady took our pulse and blood pressure and wrote down our height and weight, but the sign completely freaked out Samuel. We then had to have an EKG, our blood drawn, a urine sample, and an ultrasound on our stomachs. The whole thing only took an hour, when I think for the other people waiting it would probably take all day.

They then took us to find a little breakfast—it ended up being ice cream bars, much to the delight of Grace, Samuel refused to eat—where I took this picture of the ice cream freezer.

Abercrombie and Titch??

At the Public Security Bureau we ate our ice cream bars, which seemed rather decadent and disrespectful, given the seriousness of the place, had our pictures taken again (I forgot to mention that we had that done 2 other times previously in the day, on top of the four pictures each we brought along with us in the morning), and then that was it. The gentleman who is responsible for putting all our resident paperwork together will keep our passports for about a month, oh lovely thought, but for now I think that is it for our encounters with Inner Mongolian bureaucracy. I remember thinking back in March as I looked at the crazy list of paperwork we needed to compile in two short weeks, this is but one of many bumps on the road to China. Well, here came another bump and in the end it wasn’t so bad after all.

Home Sweet Home

Our apartment building--we're on the 4th floor on the right.
(Do you see Grace and Dave?)

We moved into our apartment Sunday. It wasn’t a terribly difficult move since the “foreign expert” building is attached to the Education Hotel. If you look at the picture of the E. H. in the previous post, imagine you can see off to the left, facing it. That’s where our building is. And no, I still don’t have an address. I don’t even know the name of our street. Well, I can say that we are on the 4^th floor, on the east side of the building. Our windows are on the north side and the south side, which is terrific.

So, picture in your mind a backwards “L” shaped apartment. It’s a really small one-bedroom apartment. You enter the apartment in the corner between the short and long legs, which opens onto the living room. To the left of the living room, at the top of the long leg, are the kitchen and the bathroom. The kitchen has a small new refrigerator, a propane 2-plate hot plate on top of what looks like a desk, a very small sink with only cold water, and a tiny metal cabinet next to it, shorter than the sink.

The Kitchen

The bathroom has a toilet, a pedestal sink, a funky washing machine, and a shower head. There is a drain in the corner of the bathroom, into which the washing machine dumps its water and where the shower water goes.

The Bathroom
(I'm preparing to do dishes--still in my pajamas.)

The living room has a couch, an armchair, a bookcase, and a desk with a big TV on it. The short leg of the “L” has the room I’m sitting in now, which isn’t really separate from the living room. It has the kids’ two beds and another desk.

Grace is crashed out; Samuel is homesick and pouting.

Off from the desk are the windows which face south and a door which opens onto the balcony, where the drying lines are.

Our bedroom is through another door, closer to the living room. There’s a double bed, another armchair, a sort of vanity, and a big wardrobe (think The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe). And windows also facing south, at the head of our bed.

All in all it’s a pretty cozy place. It is definitely much smaller than we’re used to, and as it has been really hot and more humid than at home, it feels sometimes really really small and close. There is no air conditioner and we don’t have a fan. We keep wondering if it is worth the investment to get a fan, since it will soon start cooling down. At least, at this point we hope it’ll cool down sometime soon. Of course, we have started hearing about how cold it gets here in the winter, and we don’t want that to come too soon. It’s the proverbial rock and a hard place.

The craziest thing about the place is what I need to do in order to wash the dishes or do the laundry. I know, you’re probably still stuck on, “Wait, only a shower head???”, but believe me, that is the least of my problems here. In order to do dishes I must take my little plastic tub, complete with cartoon characters on the inside bottom (these are ubiquitous here), into the bathroom, where I put it on the floor, grab the shower head, and turn it on to hot. Hot here is not hot at home. We’re talking steam coming out of the shower head, scalding hot. I spray water into my plastic tub which already has my soap, then I lug it into the kitchen. I do the dishes on the floor because there is no counter space. They get rinsed in the sink, and then laid out on top of the little metal cabinet I mentioned.

And doing the laundry?? It’s not beating clothes on the rocks but really sometimes I feel like it’s a close second. I open up the left side of the machine (which looks a little like a small cabinet), pour in some laundry soap, take the same handy dandy shower head, and fill it up to the level I want. Now, I would actually like the level to be very high, but the capacity is practically nil and I can only wash about 8-10 articles of clothing at a time. I put the lid on, turn the dial to 15 and let it agitate for 15 minutes. Then I turn the dial again for another 15. Once the “wash” is done, I unhook the hose on the side, place said hose next to the drain (remember?), and turn another dial which makes all the water come out of the machine. I hook the hose back up, turn the dial back to wash, and fill the tub up again with water, hoping to get some kind of rinse going. 15-30 minutes later, the rinse is done, and I drain the tub yet again. (Are you sensing yet the general fatigue I am feeling by this point? Multiply by 4 or 5 times per day since Sunday and you will understand why I am fixating on this. We had two garbage bags full of dirty clothes by the time we moved in. I started laundry on Sunday and will finish those 2 bags tomorrow morning with one last load.) Okay, sorry for the aside… Anyway, once the rinse water is drained, I pull out the clothes and put them in the smaller tub on the right side. Turn the dial to 5, wait (yes, no surprise) 5 minutes, and the clothes have been spun like crazy and are now ready to be hung up. Remember when I waxed poetic about my laundry line oh so many weeks ago? This doesn’t quite have the same romance about it. But to be fair, being as hot as it is, and given how long it takes to do a load, my clothes are nearly dry by the time the next load needs to go up.

What else can I say about the place? The road outside is nearly always busy with horns and many many people walking and talking, and tractors, and cars, and car alarms, and fireworks every night (Samuel says, “Just because they invented fireworks, does that mean they have to set them off every night?” Good question. But it probably has to do with either the 60^th anniversary of the founding of the autonomous region of Inner Mongolia or else the start of the semester.) But really, it is so loud outside I can’t believe I ever worried about the sounds coming from the bars across G Way at home waking my kids at night. They sleep through it all. And there are mosquitoes. Not many, but enough to feast happily on Samuel and Grace. They don’t seem to bother Dave or me. Out and about today I saw a sign outside one of the many little shops touting “Avon”. For those of you who have gone to Naknek, AK for a summer, you know that Avon makes a lotion called Skin So Soft and that one of the fortunate side effects of that lotion is that it repels mosquitoes. Needless to say, I walked in and with the shopkeeper’s help, found some SSS lotion. I don’t know if it will work the same as the kind back home, but the kids are slathered in it tonight. Fingers crossed.

And lastly but most certainly not least, I found my very first cockroach in the bathroom this morning. What kind of adventure would we have if we didn’t have those little critters here, too?

By the way, this last picture is just too good not to put in, because it completely horrified all my bourgeois sensibilities and it took a lot for me to even walk into the kitchen. Last weekend when we moved in, a lot of people were moving out of the apartments--at least, I hope this is the reason for the insanely huge pile of garbage that I found directly below my kitchen window, albeit four flights down. The smell was intense and I was afraid it was a normal affair. Monday morning, however, I found Mrs. Hu (the manager of the building and all around incredible woman for getting everything done) and a couple of helpers sorting through every single trash bag and separating bottles and cans from food garbage. Not even a rubber glove to be seen. Mrs. Hu is way more a woman than I'll ever be.

The First Days: Insane Traffic, Jet Lag, and The Search for Food

The first few days here are frankly a giant blur right now. I’m actually really glad that I didn’t have internet access then because you would have had to ride along with my ups and downs and much of it was greatly influenced by jet lag and culture shock. The jet lag (to find out what time it is here, from the west coast of the US, “flip it” and add 3, meaning if it’s morning where you are, we are night and 3 hours ahead) has been excruciating.

The very first morning—after having fallen asleep about 2:30 a.m.—we awoke around 6 and scrambled for breakfast. I actually don’t know what we ate, but I do know that Dave burned himself pretty badly on his foot from the boiling water machine. (A number of you have asked about the water situation here and this is it: we don’t drink the tap, but we also don’t boil the water ourselves. The hotel had a boiling water machine across the hallway from our room and we filled our nalgene bottles with it at night and in the morning it’s nice and cool and sterile. We also have a SteriPen for making good water from cool tap water. So far both have worked really well. Where we are now, the boiling water machine is on the 2^nd floor, we’re on the 4^th, so it’s a bit of a hike but still worth it.) Anyway, Dave tried to fill a nalgene bottle while holding the lid and it slipped off and he got boiling water all over his forearm and the top and bottom of one foot. We immediately ran cold water over everything but mostly he thought he’d burned the bottom of his foot and forearm, so we neglected the top of his foot. This is where Mr. Song (pronounced Soong) comes in. Dave called Yongsheng to ask about burn cream and minutes later Mr. Song appeared at our door. Mr. Song is on the faculty here at Inner Mongolia Normal University (IMNU) and has been assigned to us as our “waiban”, not an interpreter exactly, but our go-to guy for everything. Mr. Song looked at the burn and the rapidly forming blisters and left only to return minutes later with this really incredible burn ointment. It helped instantly with the pain and has really made it heal quickly, I think, even though Dave’s foot still looks yucky.

(The Education Hotel)

We ate frequently at the fancy Mongolian restaurant across the street from the Education Hotel (where we stayed the first 5 days), since we didn’t have any means to cook. The first dinner was actually an elaborate banquet put on by the dean of the college. Yongsheng, his kids, his parents (from the northern-eastern-most tip of Inner Mongolia), and brother, Mr. Chen (the dean), Mr. Song, Mrs. Wu (head of faculty instruction?), and Mr. Zhou (Party secretary), and ourselves all gathered in the presidential suite of the restaurant and we were treated to lots of food, Chinese alcohol, Mongolian musical performers, many moving toasts, and lots of songs, started off by Yongsheng’s father (a professor emeritus of Russian language) who sang a haunting Tibetan song. Dave sang “Yesterday” by the Beatles and Mr. Chen, who gave the banquet, sang “Country Roads”. I probably would have been able to participate better had I not been totally in a jet lag fog and had Samuel not completely freaked out over the lamb’s head served up on the table. He spent a lot of the dinner on my lap crying because it was frankly pretty unnerving to an American kid used to seeing meat ground up or in chunks, not attached to the animal.

The second night we were treated to a family dinner at Sharon’s parent’s house (Sharon is Yongsheng’s wife), still in a fog and dead tired, but at least it was a mellow atmosphere and Samuel was able to play with Alec, Joanna (Y’s kids), and Dar Dar, Sharon’s nephew. Trying to get to their place was a harrowing experience—our first ever ride in a taxi. Since that night we have learned that Hohhot has a reputation for being the most lawless and chaotic place to drive in all of China. This is a reputation among Chinese, so I guess they know. Some of the major north/south boulevards were closed down just as we set off to dinner and the taxi driver (between giant gobs of spit hucked out the window) drove like a fiend in and out of lanes and oftentimes straight at on-coming traffic. Dave and I were completely horrified and sick to our stomachs, and Yongsheng didn’t feel too much better. An hour later we had only gone around the block and made the taxi driver drop us back outside the hotel. One of the boulevards suddenly opened up, so we hopped another taxi (now terribly late for dinner) and made it up to Sharon’s parent’s apartment. The ride back was mercifully uneventful and since then, the taxi rides have been much easier, if only a little less scary. Taxis are super cheap, costing only 6 yuan to go up the park, about 75 cents. There seems to be some kind of unwritten code of driving that all the car drivers, bike riders, and pedestrians follow. Haven’t seen any collisions yet and hope to never be in one.

Each day up until recently has been largely defined by looking for food. There is food everywhere, but our poor tired and discombobulated stomachs haven’t been feeling too much like eating what is around, and we have been counseled to not eat anything fresh/raw. Dave has been the breakfast guy, since he has been getting up before the crack of dawn. We also found on the first day, thanks to Mr. Song, really yummy frozen yogurt bars. They’re sold everywhere and are plain, creamy, and very sweet. They cost about 15 cents each and everyone likes them, another good thing. There is no cheese so far that I have found but lots of really good yogurt, and milk that is very creamy and comes in plastic pouches. There is a grocery store behind the Education Hotel that offers a lot of food, including some dubious peanut butter that we tried and promptly threw out. More on food later, as you can see that I have lots to say about it.

Heads Up

Note: Let me know if this is a duplicate post. I'm having a little technical difficulty.

This is how you can buy your fresh produce.
This is directly in front of our place.

Thank you everyone for letting me know that you got the test and airport posts. I can send out posts but I can't access the blogspot address like you do. Therefore, don't bother to send comments to my blog because I can't get to them. I guess you'll just have to email them directly to me. I'm trying to respond to everyone's emails but things are a little hectic right now. We all appreciate everyone's good wishes and we are so glad (and horribly spoiled) to have internet access. There are many more posts to come, with lots of pictures.

The Trip

So much has happened in the week we’ve been here, but I want to give you a sense of the crazy trajectory of that time, from our flight out of Vancouver, B.C., to this moment where I’m sitting at the computer in our apartment, kids watching a movie, Dave cooking dinner (spaghetti, not Chinese food—that’s another post), horns blaring outside and my laundry hanging from metal bars on the balcony.

Dave’s dad got us to the Vancouver airport in plenty of time, only for us to find out that our flight on Air China had been delayed four hours because of heavy rains in Beijing. The Air China people very kindly switched us over to an Air Canada flight that left a little earlier and would still get us to Beijing in plenty of time to go through customs (although without Air China boarding passes) and catch our connecting flight to Hohhot. And all went swimmingly (even the 11 hour flight, amazingly enough) until we landed in Beijing. Those same heavy rains that bothered us in Canada were wreaking havoc in China—flights cancelled, people sprawled everywhere in the airport, and tremendous chaos at the Air China “information” desk. Of course, by the time we got through customs (unbelievably easy), had our bags ready to re-check, our flight had been cancelled to Hohhot and the next available flight had somewhat ambiguously been rescheduled for “around” 10 p.m (despite the fact that later Dave was told there would not be another flight until the next day!). It was midnight by our internal clocks and we were very very tired. Bags in hand (well, on carts) we trudged to the Air China area and got hit full-force with utter chaos. And contrary to what we had been led to believe and had innocently presumed, not very many people spoke English. The kids and I stretched out over our bags and Dave spent the next 4 hours trying to get us on a flight.

Now, see this picture of the Air China Information counter? No lines, just a mass of people crowding up to the front, waving papers, shouting, stressed out, and the people behind the counter madly scribbling something on 8x10 pieces of paper and taping them to the wall behind them. Dave visited that counter many times, each time learning a little more about how to get information Chinese style. By a crazy stroke of luck, and originally completely unconnected to our plight, Dave started talking to a guy wearing UCLA shorts during one of his brief breaks from the crowds. This wonderful super terrific guy named Kyle (Sound a little over the top in admiration? Try being stuck in a really foreign country with no boarding passes and 2 little kids on no sleep…), who was on some kind of “Silk Road to the Future” as a “Peace Ambassador”, goes to UCLA which of course is where Dave and I both went. Oh hooray for connections and common bonds! In the end (I am a little fuzzy on this as I finally passed out with the kids), Kyle got his group’s interpreter to help Dave out. Forty minutes and four different “customer” counters later, she handed Dave 4 boarding passes. On the downside, we had to get our bags checked-in in about 15 minutes and scurry to the gate or else miss the flight. We looked over at the swarm of people not in orderly lines waiting to check-in at economy class, then we looked at the first-class counter with no one in line (or swarming, however you look at it). Dave put into play the lessons he had learned in the previous four hours and just barged right up to the first-class counter, started throwing our bags onto the belt, and boldly waited for the lady behind the counter to move his bags through. Can you imagine trying to do that in the US? And it worked!

That is where this picture comes in—we were no kidding unbelievably jubilant despite being stretched to the max. There is no picture to show how freaked out we later became when the flight to Hohhot (originally cancelled and then somehow re-instated) stayed on the tarmac with us inside for two long hours. Claustrophobia??? Ack. We did finally take off, getting into Hohhot at midnight, 9 a.m. west coast US time, 23 ½ hours after we first stepped into the Vancouver airport.

This is a test post

At Manduhai Park in Hohhot--our favorite place to hang out!

Hi everyone! I've been trying to get to my blog and can't even see it--everything else has been in Chinese. So like I said, it's a test. More to follow.

Please email me to let me know if you see this post. If it comes through, I just won't worry about not being able to see it. Thanks!