Pics & vids on Flickr!

Just a quick note to say that I've uploaded more pictures and videos to Flickr, which can be viewed here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/7303330@N03/collections/

Click on the above link (hopefully it shows up as a link), then click on "Scheer Adoption 2010" to bring up the collection of pictures from our adoption.

I also want to say that we've been *very* busy, which is why this blog has fallen way behind.  Plus, our Internet access is spotty at times, which doesn't help matters (it can take hours and hours to upload pictures and videos).  I might be updating this blog much more until we get back to the States.  (Sorry!)

Saturday May 15 - Tienanmen Square, The Forbidden City, more Chinese food, Olympic buildings and The Great Wall of China.

Today was great.  We:

- Saw Tienanmen Square : It was nice to see, but (without taking anything away from it), there wasn't much to see there -- it has tremendous political importance, but is visually not that stimulating.  Basically, its a big, well, square.  Lots of people.  Saw the outside of the Chairman Mao Mausoleum -- it's a big building, and his body is on display in there.  You can spend several hours standing in line waiting to get in to see him, then you get to see him for about 1 minute.  Needless to say, we did not do this (it would have prevented us from doing some of the other things we had planned for the day).

- Saw The Forbidden City (see picture above) : This was right across the street from Tienanmen Square.  It was pretty neat, and very big.  The buildings looked a lot like the ones we saw at the Summer Palace (no real surprise there).  It took a long time to get through the city (all walking outside or through arches, etc).  There was a very nice Royal Garden (or something like that) at the end.  Neat trees and rocks and such.

- Went to lunch at a nice Chinese restaurant and had a variety of Chinese food, including Peking Duck.  All good stuff.

- Stopped by for a quick look at the Birds Nest stadium that was built for and used in the 2008 Olympics.  We couldn't get too close (didn't have much time to spend there), but were able to take some nice pics of it from a distance, plus were able to drive by the Water Cube and a couple other Olympic buildings.

- Climbed the Great Wall of China!  This was the highlight of the day for me.  We climbed pretty high up (up to the third tower), and the only reason we stopped was because we had to head back down to meet at the bus.  I really enjoyed climbing the wall as well as taking in the scenery.  We took lots and lots of pictures and movies.  When we get back home, I'll have to create a DVD or two (or five) of pictures and movies that we took...

Speaking of pictures, I've started putting some pictures up on Flickr, and they can be accessed via the following website:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/7303330@N03/collections/72157623972227053/

It takes a lot of time to go through all the pictures we have, and I don't want to spend too much time on the computer every day, so I might not get the majority of the pics up until we get back home (sorry!).

And, I have to say this again...  Everywhere we go, people continue to want to take Danny's picture.  But at least he's starting to get used to it!  LOL!!  It's amazing.  Our tour guide was saying she thinks it's because he's a cute kid (no arguments from me!) with a big smile, and he has curly hair, which is something that Asians aren't used to seeing.  It wouldn't surprise me if his picture shows up on a billboard somewhere in China...

Today Bonny, Danny and I wore our "Soma FM" t-shirts (Soma FM is an Internet radio station based out of California, and if you send them a donation, they will send you a T-shirt; I've been donating to them for a few years now, so we've been collecting Soma FM T-Shirts, and today we all wore ours).  Today people were wanting to take pictures of all three of us!  It was really bizarre (in a good and funny way).  And a few times as we passed some young (20-something) Chinese people, they pointed to our T-shirts and started chattering excited -- I can only guess that they recognized the Soma FM logo and were (pleasantly) surprised to see it on our T-shirts.

I also want to say that the Chinese people have been extremely nice to us, and they try to help us when we ask for assistance -- we usually can muddle through it using body language, etc.  The trip has been very enjoyable and relaxing -- way more than I was expecting.  I'll admit I was more than a bit nervous about being in a strange land and not being able to speak the native tongue, but the kindness of the people has really put me at ease.  I would love to come back and spend more time visiting China -- there's so much to see that you could come back many times over many years and still only scratch the surface of the culture and history of China.

Chinese chess.

As we walked through the Hutong Village, we saw a number of people playing a board game with large pieces.  It turns out it was Xiangqi, or what is commonly called "Chinese Chess".  (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiangqi for more info.)

Hutong Village residence.

Here are some pictures of the residence at the Hutong Village.  One of the pics is a model of what the village would have looked like in ancient times, and the other is a picture of the courtyard today.

Drums at Hutong Village.

Here's a shot of the steep stairs and drums at the top of the temple in the Hutong Village.  I have a video of these guys playing the drums (I will try to upload the video to Flickr).

Friday May 14 - Temple of Heaven, Hutong Village and Chinese Golden Acrobats.

We had a great day today (Friday) – we went to the Temple of Heaven, the Hutong Village (pronounced "who tohng" (think the word "tone" with a short "guh" on the end of it)) and saw the Chinese Golden Acrobats.

The Temple of Heaven was very neat. After going through some beautiful courtyards and buildings, we ended up at a large stone structure that was made up of rings at different levels (imagine a wedding cake, where each higher layer is smaller in diameter than the previous layer). At the top you go to the center of the circle and say prayers to Heaven for things like a good harvest, etc. (See the Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_of_heaven)

Trivia fact: Circles and squares have important meanings in the Chinese culture – circles mean Heaven, and squares mean Earth. This is why religious structures are typically circular.

The Hutong Village was very different. This is where we got a glimpse of ancient Chinese culture. The roads are very narrow (I believe Hutong means "narrow streets" or something like that). The roads are so narrow that cars can't get through there, so you ride around in rickshaws! Rickshaws are two wheeled buggies that (in the old days) were pulled by a man. The ones in Hutong Village were a bit more modern – it was the buggy type of thing, but it was pulled by a man on a bicycle. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rickshaw) Before we went on the rickshaws, we went up a big tower with 69 very steep steps. At the top you could see out over large parts of the city. In ancient times the monks (?) would hit a huge drum to sound out the time (like chimes at the top of each hour). The huge drum is long gone, but they have a number of very large drums, and shortly after we got there they did a demonstration – it was awesome, and very LOUD! LOL!

After the tower & drum demonstration, we walked a bit through the Hutong temple, then went on rickshaw rides down a couple streets in Hutong Village and ended up at a residence – the place is laid out such that there is a courtyard (probably 40 ft by 40 ft), and small buildings on each side of the courtyard. Each building had one or two rooms. Basically, the whole area made up a house – on the north side was the master bedroom and a study. On east side were two bedrooms. On the west side was the kitchen and some other rooms. (I don't remember what rooms were on the south side of the courtyard.) This is the layout of the traditional, typical Hutong residence. There weren't any bathrooms there – you had to use a common bathroom down the street. Imagine being in the dead of winter and having to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night (or even going to the kitchen) – you'd have to put on a warm winter coat just to go to the bathroom or kitchen or such! Quite a different lifestyle...! Oh, normally there would have been two additional courtyards – one north of the north rooms, and one south of the south rooms, but in the residence we visited, those courtyards were long gone.

After the residence, we took the rickshaws back to where we started, then went to see the Chinese Golden Acrobats. We've seen the CGA a couple times back in Chicago, but this program was different – they had some live birds flying around above the audience. It was quite a fun time. After the show, we went back to the hotel and collapsed.

Tomorrow we are going to the Great Wall, and other things. Tomorrow is going to be long, then we will try to hit the sack early because we will be leaving very early Sunday morning to go to Nanchang.

Scooters for sale.

Oops...  I forgot to include a picture of the scooters they were selling at the Carrefour in the previous post -- here they are...