Eskimo Joe's and Hennepin County

Here's a picture of Laura with the baby Jesus statue in the park across the street. I asked her to go stand by the statute since you aren't supposed to get on the grass and I figured the security guard wouldn't yell at a baby. After taking the picture, I realized that about 20 people sitting on benches in the park were also taking her picture with their cell phones.

A few weeks ago, I bought a book from a kiosk in the mall. I took it out of the bag the other day to start reading it, and looked closer at the old labels on it. Check it out:

Hennepin county is in the St Paul, MN area. Pretty crazy.

I saw someone with a Joe's shirt on at the mall. He wasn't too interested to talk to me, but said he hadn't ever been to Stillwater.

While looking for Christmas gifts, I saw a Play-doh Sushi kit. It had cookie cutters for fish, sushi, sashimi, etc. Pretty funny.

We went to Jim's company's Christmas party last night. It was lots of fun and had great food and music. Everyone was really nice and I wished I could have had the chance to spend more time with them throughout our time here. Laura did really well, especially for being up so late. She and I left early, and missed Jim's skit where he played Santa Claus. He said the hat was too small and just sat on top of his head.

CHINA - day 4 Beijing to Xi'an

I actually teared up a little when I realized that this wouldn't be a day of rest. The only thing on the itinerary was a flight to xi'an. I was so tired and even more worried because I knew laura was tired. But we got up at 6:00 to make our flight and after laura slept the entire two hour flight, I somehow felt refreshed too. The food on the airplane was scary. A huge hunk of skin in my chicken that looked like it had been gathered up and tied or something. It was also very spicy food. Then we ate again ate the airport in a restaurant that was ok.

After the airport, we drove 45 minutes to the city of Xi'an. On the way, the tour guide pointed out these mounds, which are man made and the tombs of ancient emperors and their wives and officers. How cool is that? Just these huge tombs sitting on the landscape looking like innocent hills. I think most have been opened, but at least one, the one by the Terracotta Soldiers hasn't even been opened yet because when you open them, all the beautiful colors on the painted sculptures and pictures fade away within hours because of the oxygen. And because they items get stolen so easily. Its hard for me to understand how those reasons can stop the entire world from finding out whats inside these tombs, but its an interesting display of respect.

We took a bus to the North Gate of the City Wall. This turned out to be my favorite thing on the whole trip and I'm not exactly sure why. Its a huge wall that goes all the way around the city, almost as wide as it is tall. Its in really good condition and very impressive. I think there are still only four exits from the wall and there's also a moat (a moat!), which is now called a canal. Even though the city has grown up around and outside the wall, its very easy to imagine what it was like centuries ago. Just below the North Gate, there is a large courtyard with an emperor's chair that you can sit in to have your picture taken for money.

A video of Laura at the North Gate:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-7VjiWTLcA

Xi'an was the capital of china for 13 dynasties while Beijing (current capital) only spanned 4 dynasties. I'm not sure the length of time of each though. The city actually looks a lot more like I imagined communist china than beijing did. Beijing had definitely been spruced up for the Olympics. Most of the buildings in xi'an looked like very drab, ugly apartments built in the 60s and not touched since then. Easily a quarter of them were literally falling apart. I wondered if the people living in them were cold all the time or if they even had electricity. But jim and i both still liked it better than beijing. The cool thing was that interspersed with the decaying buildings, there were very beautiful ancient Chinese structures. Palaces and towers and pagodas and the city wall. That part was cool. In Beijing it was almost all modern unless you were specifically in an historical site.

Mercifully, they then took us back to the hotel for 2 hours of rest! As soon as we walked in, Laura turned on the TV, jumped on the bed and laid back on the pillow. It was so out of character for her that we just stared for a minute. Pretty funny.

Today we realized we had lost Laura's hat. Bummer. It was a good, Smartwool hat. Oh well, she borrowed mine and I used a scarf I had bought in Beijing.

Then we went to dinner. Laura devoured the soup and some ice cubes that someone had asked for. Now, she's still addicted to ice. They had a big aquarium with a huge turtle in it. With some help, Laura named it Shi-Shi (means thank you in Chinese) and talked about it all night long.

Back at the hotel, I sent postcards and got on the internet for 15 minutes. We bought lotion because Laura's cheeks were so dry from the cold and wind.

The hotel here was all decked out for Christmas. Very pretty:

A Chinese snowman:
Sculpture garden at the hotel:

CHINA - day 3 Beijing

Ok, so this morning we started at a jade factory. Jade is very popular there and we got to see people carving and polishing. Pretty cool but not really our thing.

Next we drove by the Olympic area. It seemed like it was about two miles long. Saw the stadium and aquatic center from the bus.

Then the Great Wall. Did you know that its very very cold and very very windy at the great wall? At least the little part we went to. So cold that laura stuck her head down in my jacket and refused to come out. She slept there the whole time. Anyway we drove quite a bit to get to a section that wasnt quite as crowded as the first part we saw. Then we took a cable car ride (swinging in the wind) to one tower and walked along the wall to the next tower. It was so beautiful and so powerful to stand and see it creep over the mountain tops as far as you could see. It was a big moment for me as this was my goal for coming on this trip. (although a wall in Xi'an becomes my favorite site later). It was an incredibly steep walk up to the tower. I held on to the railing all the way up and down.

We ate lunch at a sad little buffet near the wall. But they had the best little sesame seed dessert balls! Between the three of us we must have eaten 10.

Then we went shopping at a "bargain market". We were expecting like little souvenirs and food or a flea market or something but it was more like just another mall. Lots of clothing that is too small for us. Some souvenirs but not many. Plus all the vendors are soooo pushy and jim and aren't used to it. Made us mad. After buying a few things We went back to the bus early and waited for everyone else.

This morning jim had felt sick and this afternoon I felt sick, so it was a relief that dinner was good. We went to the original and most famous place to serve Peking Duck. It is like little tacos of duck with onions and a sweet sauce. It was delicious. And laura loved it too! We couldn't believe it. But she just kept on shovelling in the duck and she still asks for Peking duck because it makes us laugh. Its so strange that she likes it because she won't eat any other kind of meat. Maybe a bite of chicken now and then but very rarely. As we were leaving, a man with us proudly stated that the duck was raised similarly to how they raise the geese for foie grois. Well that stinks. Ruined a perfectly good meal! The restaurant was huge: 5 stories tall and as big as a small hotel. Think of how many poor ducks. But it sure was yummy.

Laura was as big of a hit in china as she is in Manila. Honestly I'm looking forward to coming back to the states and blending in. No more people crowding around laura, touching her, demanding that she smile or tell them her name. I'm so grumpy now when people won't leave us alone. Its really irritating. I have a small appreciation for what famous people go through and I can definitley how hard it would be to be recognized everywhere you go. Jim and I both decided we have no interest in ever being famous.

That night we went to an area that seemed a little like times square, but was more a shopping district. We actually found more things here that we wanted than at the bargain market, and also some dairy queen! Yum. We went to a department store, a chopstick store, and a tea store. There was a Chinese kids toy store, but we ran out of time.

On the bus home, laura very deliberatly took her shoe off and then stuck her nose in and took a deep breath. Jim and I burst out laughing. No idea where she got that idea but it sure cracked us up.

Our tour guide in Beijing told us a few things about china as we drove around town. For example he explained the one child per family thing better. There are exceptions to the rule: if both parents are only children then they can have two and if they are minorities they can have as many as they want. But for most families, if they have more than one child, they have to pay the equivalent of US$15,000. If they don't pay the fine then they have to pay a ton for the kid's schooling, they don't get a stipend for the kid's food , and the kid can never get an ID card later in life, therefore no job. Also he said there was a lot of discrimination against young women in the workplace because employers didn't want to pay for maternity leave. So many young couples are chosing not to have any kids at all. I have no idea what the abortion rate in China is, but my guess is that it must be staggering. How much pain many young families must be in! I know we have incredible population problems on this planet, but there has to be a better way. I didn't mean for this to be an editorial, but I hadn't ever given this rule much thought and it hit me kind of hard to think about its repercussions, both for the babies and the surviving families. I wonder how the culture is going to be affected by this and by only having single child families. Again, I actually have no idea what I'm talking about, just imagining.

On to happier things-its so quiet in Beijing! Something jim and I both noticed. Compared to honking and loud cars and noises on the street in Manila, beijing is so nice and quiet. Still lots of smog but at least the cars are quiet. The tour guide said that, except for BMWs, mercedes and Audi, all cars have to be made in china. So we saw a ford and a buick which I guess were made in china. Didnt realize those American companies had plants in china. But there are also lots of bikes. The tour guide said there weren't many because it was winter and because many people are now commuting from residential neighborhoods to work, but it looked like a lot to me! Women and men, business clothes, elderly, all kinds of people on bikes. Some electric and some motorcyles, but mostly the same exact model of one-speed with a basket on front and either a luggage rack or child seat on back.

After we got back to the hotel, we saw that the maid had even set up Laura's bed for us. How nice!

bugs

Came down to the playground/pool area to write more about china, but I emailed away the time and i have to go soon so jim can go back to work so I'll write about bugs instead. As I was coming down the stairs, on the floor below us, I saw my first Filipino cockroach. 3 inches, no kidding! I was wondering where all the bugs were. The apartment owners have sent in pest control twice with icky stuff to kill cockroaches but I hadn't ever seen them. We've only had a few smaller bugs. I did have to move all our food into the freezer and fridge about a month ago because our pantry cabinet was infested with little flying things and when we got back from china, we found that the ants had moved in in our absence. But they are just really tiny ants that are literally everywhere, in every room and don't seem to swarm too badly, which is what really bugs me. So I've been trying to keep it relatively clean to keep it relatively bug-free considering what I was expecting when we moved in. I can deal with little bitty ants for one more week. But that cockroach! 4 inches!

wi fi!

I just found a free full strength wi fi at laura's playground on the sixth floor of our building! Ok so its really just someone who didn't put a password on their wi fi.

A little about our time since we got back before I continue the china stuff. We got back lasts Wednesday night. Laura had some drainage the last couple days in china. That stopped when we got back to Manila so I thought that the humidity here took care of it. Then Friday laura and I both came down with a cough. By Saturday we both felt like we'd been hit by a truck. Literally the worst I ever remember feeling. We both went to the doctor on sunday because we weren't getting any sleep due to coughing and just plain body aches. Anyways they did blood work and gave us some drugs and we are still a little weak but much improved.

Before it got really bad, on Thursday I think, laura and I happened upon a dora the explorer shoe at the mall. It was people in costumes singing and dancing. Laura was in heaven! She sat on my lap for a whole hour and cried when we had to
leave at the end.

Saturday, in a moment of lucidity from my sickness, I got a pedicure and manicure! That felt great and was very cheap.

Other than that, we've mostly been vegging on the couch watching tv, which is almost unheard of for us during the day. Laura and I never watched tv, but we have discovered a few good shows in the morning. You've got to check out wonder pets on nick jr. Its great. I gotta say that laura's not too great at vegging. She's way to wiggly even when shes sick. I hope I don't teach her to be good at vegging.

puny

Major delay in journalling...laura and I caught a crazy china virus. Guess all the people glaring at us for not forcing laura to leave her hat on were right afterall. Jims been a great nursemaid but since he had to go to work today, L and I dragged ourselves to the mall for some lunch. Think we'll treat ourselves to a cab ride back the four blocks. Don't worry. We are on the mend the doctor gave us 4 different drugs and said that it probably wasnt bird flu. Ha ha. Seriously I am feeling better today and so is laura. Too bad jim is starting to feel icky. I'll continue the china stuff when I can. We go back to states next week! Yea!

CHINA - day 2 Beijing

This morning, after a delicious breakfast that included milk for Laura (yea!), we started out in Tian'anmen Square. How cool was that? To actually be in Tian'anmen square was pretty crazy. Really, its just a huge huge open square with some big buildings around it and a statue in the middle. It was completely crowded, mostly with tour groups like ours. With the leaders carrying around the little flags and groups of 10-20 people following. And there were people trying to sell hats and gloves to stupid people like us who weren't prepared for the cold. Most of the hats had olympic embroidery on them since the olympics will be in Beijing next year. Actually, olympic stuff is everywhere in Beijing.

Anyways, here's Jim and a family picture in Tian'anmen square:

There's a huge picture of Mao on one of the buildings that is actually an oil painting that gets repainted every year by the same family. It weighs 1 ton. Its kind of hard to tell in this picture how big it is, but I Jim's work computer doesn't have the right software to crop it and zoom in. Believe me, it is big.

Next, we went through the tunnel under the big painting of Mao and into the Forbidden City. This was a city that commoners couldn't go into, only high ranking officials and the emperor. It was huge, with tons of small buildings that all look alike. Laura and I's favorite part were the big cauldrons that were everywhere. They used to hold water to use for putting out fires since they used to use candles everywhere and the buildings were made of wood.

The toilets on this trip were a big deal. Always an exciting event to find one that actually had a seat, but you learn to use the "holes in the ground" quickly. So glad Laura's still in diapers so we didn't have to worry about getting her to a bathroom all the time! Thought this sign was funny:

After the Forbidden City, we went to lunch, I think. Then to the zoo to see the Giant Panda exhibit. I hate to say it, but it seems like the pandas in San Diego, are happier than the ones in China! In China, they were pacing back and forth in front of their doors to the inside and didn't have much interest in anything in their habitats. In San Diego, they were always up in the trees sleeping or eating and just seemed very comfortable and secure. Oh well, maybe its just the cold weather in China. Although, since that's their natural habitat, shouldn't they be comfortable in the cold? Anyway, Laura enjoyed it.

Jim and I enjoy funny signs:

Then we headed to the Summer Palace. Its a palace on a lake where emperors would spend a few months in the summer. Very pretty, but it looked a lot like the rest of the palaces and Laura was getting bored.

Ahhh...the sweet potato. Without a doubt - my favorite food on this trip. Outside the Summer Palace, there were sidewalk vendors selling baked sweet potatoes. It was delicious. Laura devored it too! I was a little bitter about sharing it with her...ha ha. but there really wasn't much at the meals that Laura enjoyed, so I was excited to see her eat something besides the crackers we brought for her as snacks. I wish we would have run into more of these vendors, but most of the places our tour took us were too upscale to have something like this. But we thoroughly enjoyed it this time.

Dinner was a western buffet. I think that just meant they had a salad with Thousand Island dressing. Nothing else too western about it, but it was good.

Here's another shot of the Mao painting in Tian'anmen Square when we passed it on the way home. Very big.

CHINA - day 1 Manila to Beijing

Our trip was exciting from the very start! We had planned on leaving the house at 4:30am to catch our 7:15 flight, but the night before, Jim came home and said there was a city-wide curfew from midnight to 5am because of a standoff in a hotel in Makati with some senator who used to be a rebel leader. Hmmmm...things like that don't happen in St Paul, Minnesota! So, we caught a cab at 5am instead, which meant we got a little extra sleep (yea!) and we made it on time, no problem. We had breakfast at the airport and there were absolutely no complications getting through security and on the plane. What a great way to start the trip! Laura was pretty good on the 3 hour flight, though there was one tantrum and she didn't sleep at all, but we all survived pretty well. She didn't have her own seat on the flights from Manila into or out of China, but they did get her a seat on the flights inside China. And on this first flight, we luckily had an empty seat next to us.

The tour company picked us up at the airport, they were very easy to find and very efficient. We met some nice people, including a Spanish couple that we enjoyed very much. His name is Jesus, but I can't remember hers. He really like Laura, but she was pretty shy with him. They ended up sharing a Gazpacho and a Sangria recipe with us that I'm excited to try. He didn't speak too much english, so we even got to try out our Spanish a little. We thought it was funny that we Americans left the Philippines to go to China to meet a Spanish couple. Here's a picture of all of us later on in the trip at the Wild Goose Pagoda in Xi'an:

After the airport, we went to lunch. All the restaurants in Beijing were great. Later, in Xi'an, they weren't as exciting and by then, we were really tired of the exact same dishes for 2 meals every day. But in Beijing, we were still enjoying the novelty. In most of the restaurants, our little tour had our own rooms with the big, round, family style meals with a lazy susan in the middle. About 10 people per room and we filled 2 rooms. The food was usually similar to what you get in an American Chinese restaurant, which surprised us. I thought we weren't getting actually authentic food in America. But it was usually sweet and sour pork, beef and broccoli, soup, a chicken dish, a whole fish (eyes and all!), and a few vegetable dishes. Nothing was too spicy until we got to Xi'an, where they eat spicier food.

After lunch, we headed to the Temple of Heaven, which was a temple built for the emperors to worship or reflect on heaven? I don't know, I have a terrible memory and Jim may remember exactly what it was used for better than I do. It was very pretty and had one main circular building and several nearby buildings that were used to prepare for the main ceremony. The best thing I remember about this tour was that we walked along this long walkway to get to the main structures and all along the walkway, there were tons of older Chinese people having soooo much fun! They were singing, dancing, playing cards, playing a version of hacky-sack, and just generally having a blast. The guide said that retired people come here to socialize and tourists enjoy it too. Jim and I decided we were going to come here when we are old since this looked much much better than sitting in a nursing home. Here's a quick video of one of the dances:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XtAqqZu5Ys

Here's a family picture at the Temple and a full picture of the whole temple. Most of the pictures at sites will show Laura as a bundle of coats and blankets. That's because it was very cold and she pretty much only napped when she was in the mei tai and I was walking around. And we didn't really have too many warm clothes, so we just layered all our clothes every day and Laura and I kept each other warm. As a result of all this though, we don't have too much proof that Laura was there. Just little bundles of blankets or coats in the pictures:

I think after this we had to wait in the bus for a while because there were more people that were going to join us on the trip, but their plane was running late. Then we went to dinner. After dinner, we went to a Kung Fu play at a theater. Sounds strange, but it was really great. It was a legend about a boy learning Kung Fu. Laura actually sat through the entire show and really enjoyed it! She was very quiet, didn't sleep and watched the whole thing - 1 1/2 hours! She and I quietly talked about what was going on on stage. Luckily, it was a very exciting and interesting show with lots of jumping, dancing and music. At a couple of points, they would have the theater pretty dark, and then turn on the lights suddenly and there were kung fu masters standing right next to they aisles (we were on the aisle) and it made me jump sky high, but Laura didn't cry or even act scared. I couldn't believe it. Anyway, there was an older Kung Fu teacher in the show that she kept calling "Papa" (her name for Jim's dad) and he wore a red robe, so she kept talking about "Papa in the red dress". Thought that was pretty funny. And there were several little boys in the show who could do amazing acrobatics, so she really liked watching them, too.

On the way home, we saw signs for IKEA and Walmart, so I guess we weren't too far out of our element! Most of the signs in Beijing were in Chinese characters and English. But in Xian, there were very very few signs in English. We also saw a famous building under construction that Jim had heard of, but didn't know the name. It will be very distinguishable when it is built. Both towers are leaning and will be joined by the cantilevers. Here's a picture:

After the show, we headed home to the hotel. In both hotels, we were able to make Laura a little tent for her Pack n Play in between the layers of the curtains. It worked great and she slept pretty well most nights. Toward the end of the trip, she and I caught a cold, so the last 2 nights, we were up with her most of the night to keep her head elevated so her drainage wouldn't keep her awake. Here's a picture of her "tent".

By the way, both hotels were great. The rooms were beautiful and very clean, as nice or nicer than any hotel we've stayed at in the states. There was complementary breakfast every morning and it wasn't just stale bagels and cereal. It was a beautiful, huge buffet with every imaginable american breakfast food, plus asian breakfast foods. Eggs, bacon, sausage, french toast, pancakes, cereal, fruit, juices, noodles, omelet bars, breads, etc..... I learned to eat a huge breakfast since I started loosing interest in the lunches and dinners by the end of the trip. And Laura really enjoyed the bathtub, which was really deep, so she could almost go swimming. Jim and I enjoyed the unlimited hot water since our apartment in Manila just has a small water heater that fits under the bathroom sink and that lasts just long enough to wash and rinse everything if you really hurry. No dilly-dallying around.

One more thing about the hotel and china - they really didn't speak English as well as they do in the Philippines. I called housekeeping to try and get another blanket, but the lady in housekeeping didn't understand the word blanket. We definitely would have had to learn Chinese better if we had gone without a tour or stayed much longer. As it was, we just learned "thank you" and "hello". Not that I expect everyone in the world to speak English, it was just a surprise. We've been a little disappointed at how little Tagalog we have had to learn in Manila.

made it back

we're back! Had a good time but it was definitely past time to come home. I'm sitting in pizza hut with laura looking forward to some decidedly not Chinese food. Headed to the grocery store next and then home for, hopefully, a second nap today. I'll try to get to the coffee shop tonight to start the journal of our trip.