Where did we go?

Let me know by which picture you can tell where we went. There are 4 total.

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4.

Of course, I'll put the rest of the pictures up soon!

Suprise Trip

Hey guys - we're headed off again.

We found a inexpensive flight somewhere on Ryan air. We're leaving this morning and coming back Christmas eve! I'm not gonna say where, but I'll post pictures and you guys can all try and guess!

We'll take the safest plane. ;)

So exciting!

Wind and Flowers

Two quick things here.

First, I got flowers at the airport! Eoghan made this arrangement himself. The colors are really beautiful together.


















Secondly, it's super windy. I found this one spot down on the walk at the beach where I could hardly stand up. I would estimate it was a constant 50-60 mile an hour wind. It wasn't raining, but I still felt that I was in a hurricane. I'm not holding my purse like that - it's flying!

Suitcases

Well, it's off for another adventure. Eoghan and I are headed to Ireland again for a few weeks.

With all this travel it was time to get some new suitcases. After a good bit of bargain shopping (I love TJ Max sometimes) I found these suitcases that are quite large, and distinctive enough (brown) without being too garish.

Henry is clearly suspicious of the new suitcases. I'm pretty sure he knows we're going to be leaving without him.

International pet travel is not impossible, but it is 1) not without danger to the pets because they will be traveling in cargo 2) as expensive as my ticket. Henry has a lady down the hall who has offered to look after him, and Lester may be stopping by for rubs as well.

Eoghan has already arrived in Ireland, and seems to be having a good time. Now I've just got two exams to finish before I can leave and join him.

Tienanmen Square and the Forbidden City

Another cloudy, hazy hot day we went down to T. square and the Forbidden City.

The square is large, but there isn’t much there. Most of the tourists we saw were Chinese, many of them with their children. It’s not exactly Disney World, so I thought it was strange. I guess it’s more like bringing kids to something in DC.

We took this picture and it took FOREVER for everyone to get situated and give their cameras to one central photo taker…. We were taking so long that a group of Chinese tourists started crowding around us and taking pictures of us getting our picture taking. Pretty embarrassing.

The Forbidden City was much more exciting.

First of all, it’s huge – about 2,362,205 square feet. It has 980 buildings. Does this give you an idea of how large it is?

This river runs through it, and I believe Arthur told us the river here runs from the Summer Palace. But, maybe I made that up.

This picture was taken before a complete downpour begun, soaking us all. It was a really pretty scene, and I felt like I had seen pictures of it before. Now I have m y own picture of it!

The Imperial Gardens were very impressive. I was enjoying them so much I completely lost the group. I had to go back to find them, and as soon as I did it started raining and we left. If I hadn’t gotten lost, I wouldn’t have seen the gardens. The elephant is from the garden, and you can see one of the cypress trees behind him.

That’s all I’ve got time for right now… more to come. :)

Lama Temple and Temple of Confucius

Our second day in Beijing, we went to the Lama Temple. Lama with one "l".

Work on the temple began in 1694 during the Qing Dynasty (I'm trying to learn Chinese History, so bear with this re-cap. I couldn't remember it all so some of this is from wikipedia) as an official residence of the prince's eunuchs and concubines. Eventually the prince ended up living there until he took the throne in 1722. After that, half became a lamasery (a monestary for Tibetan monks) and half remained palace.

The Lama Temple has a large gate, followed by a tree lined path, then several Halls with different buddhas inside.



The gate is guarded by two lions, male and female for balance. The male has his paw on a ball, the female has her paw on a cub. I'm a big fan of the lions.

I'll have to do my best to describe because these are active religious grounds and pictures inside the temples was not allowed. The first golden buddha is a very large, fat, happy buddha in the center with the four Heavenly Kings along the sides. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Heavenly_Kings ) I thought the kings were pretty interesting. The each held a lot of meaning, in the colors of their faces, what they were holding, and their position in the temple. Wikipedia can tell you more if you're interested.

Most of the other halls had three fit-looking bronze buddhas in the center. They were the Buddhas of the Three Ages, the statue of the Gautama Buddha (Buddha of the Present) is in the center, with the Kasyapa Matanga (Buddha of the Past, right) and the Maitreya Buddha (Buddha of the Future, left). There were life size statues of men on the sides. I can't remember what they were for.

The Grande Finale though was the last buddha. He's in The Pavilion of Ten Thousand Happinesses. (I can't even imagine that much happinesses) This buddha is also on the skinnier side but he's over 85 feet tall! He's covered from a single piece of white sandalwood and was included in the Guiness Book of Records in 1993. This is not the largest buddah, of course, but it is one of the tallest.

As I mentioned before, this is an active religious site. There are prayer wheels. These large drums hold prayers. In Buddhism, it is believed motion brings prayers to heaven. That is why prayers are written on flags that wave in the wind or spinnable objects like this drum. Also, there were lots of people burning three sticks incense at a time. Three is an important number. (You can see the incense smoke in the picture)

From the Lama Temple we went to the Temple of Confucius. They had a very cute gift shop, but I wasn't sure what I wanted so no purchases were made. The trees were also beautiful. One cypress had an interesting story. I was really tired by this point, while I walked around a little I really enjoyed sitting and just enjoying the garden.

The next day we headed to Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City so that evening we just went back and studied and went to bed. In fact, I've got to get to tomorrow's reading so I'll blog more about all that later.

Please write comments folks, otherwise I think no one cares.

Arriving in China

The Flight
The flight was just over 13 hours. Despite the fact that on the plane there were 160 loud and excited high school choir kids, along with their equally enthusiastic chaperons, it didn't really seem that long. This is probably because the wine was free and I took a sleeping pill. According to the little "where in the world is this plane" map they showed us in-flight, we didn't take the route I thought we would. We flew northwest out of the airport (but I could still see my apt. building on the way towards the lake!) and north along lake Michigan. Then I feel asleep. Then we were flying over ICE BURGS!
On the way in from the airport you can really see the work that's gone into the Olympic preparation. There is beautiful new landscaping everywhere and the airport is immaculate. It's a little like a brand new, high end shopping mall. People have been so friendly. So far, I've only picked up "hello" in Chinese. I'm getting really good at gestures though.

The weather is really hot and humid. There is a constant haze. They've told us China is practicing to control the weather at the Olympics, so they are "seeding" the clouds with partials. Moisture collects on these particles and is then heavy enough to fall as rain. They are hoping to seed the clouds right before the ceremonies to have clear skies. Right now though it just seems to worsen the issues of smog and haze.

We had a group dinner when we all got in. It was the most Chinese Restaurant looking restaurant I've ever seen. Does that make sense? :) They ordered for us so I really have no idea what I've eaten so far.










This morning we took a tour of campus. This is the building where the library is and where I"ll have class. (I have pink hiking pants on because we're going to the temple, and they were the only pants I brought that weren't jeans.) The artifacts in the library are all real, and very old. These cute little statues are about 2000 years old! There is only internet in the library and in the coffee shop across the street. The coffee shop is very cute. It's boutique-y. The menu has "Western" things on it with English words. It's a nice alternative when I've had all the mystery food I can handle. :)

We toured some temples today too, but I'll have to look through my materials to figure out what we saw and then I can put those pictures up.