The flight was nothing like I expected.  The plane was filled.  The food was pretty good but not really anything to write home about.  The neatest part was flying west to go east and getting to fly over the arctic circle and down through Russia to get to China.  Not sure what Russia is like from the ground (maybe that will be one of the new adventures???)  but it looks amazing from the air.  Huge rivers, mountains, miles and miles and miles and miles and miles without even small towns.  The ice over the arctic circle was neat.  I guess I expected it to be one huge chunk even around the edges, but from the air it looks like there are lots of big chunks but not all one chunk.  That was kind of interesting.

The one thing about the whole flight that struck me most was the fact that you are not ALOWED to open the window even a crack during the flight.  Every time I tried to look out the window the old bat that was patrolling the isles yelled at me.  I was SO glad I had a window seat… NOT.  You would have thought I was an inmate.  Funny… when we were taking off, the lady in the isle seat of the CENTER three seats bitched at me for not letting her see out of my window. Uh… hello… Not alowed to look out the window on take off becuase everyone else wanted to look out my window then and not alowed to open the window later.

Lessons Learned…

Temple of Heaven

We got to the hotel in the middle of the afternoon and took a quick shower and headed out, via taxi, to Temple of Heaven park.  It was stunning.  And it was crouded.  It was our first glimpse of the way that Chinese people deal with toursts and deal with crouds.

The temple itself was beautiful.  The Beijing skyline was in the background (complete with a ferriswheel from the amusement park).  The traditional Chinese roofline with the animals at the corners.  Stunning REDs and GOLDs and BLUEs and GREENs.  Dragons everywhere.  Gras where people can do exercises and sit quietly.  Parks in China are some of the most wonderful places to be.

People do exercise in nearly every park and most of the parks have free manual exercise equipment.

Chinese deal with crowds… I am pretty sure it has to do with the fact that there are SO many people packed into such small area of land in the cities, but people in China really don’t do “manners” and “line” well.  They pretty much do shove until you get to where you want to/need to be.  In certain instances it is more just jostle for position.  In many cases it is shove… really shove… until you get to where you need youself to be.  Unless you figure this out and play by the same rules, you will basically not get anywhere of actually get what you need out of whatever you are trying to do.  Paying for tickets into the temple… getting to the beginning of the line to the temple to see inside… to get OUT of the entrance of the temple after you have seen what you need to see… you need to shove if there is a cround.  It works better if you shove with defference, but shove is what you need to do.  This is how they deal more with each other (and tourists… and life in general).  You can see the same thing in traffic.  Traffic lanes and lines are viewed as suggestions.  People will cut you off and attempt to push you out of the way… cars try to push busses, busses push cars, cabs push each other, cars push pedestrians and cyclists (you may have the right of WAY but they have the right of WEIGHT and weight wins out hands down).

The other thing that I learned…

Vendors are pushy, they will haggle if you walk away.  If you make eye contact, they figure they have a sucker on the hook and they will follow you and push and push and push.  A book will go from 100 Yuan to 10 Yuan.  Watches (ROLEX no less) will go from 500 Yuan for one to 50 Yaun for 3.  It takes a lot to get rid of them.  They will even come up to you in McDonalds.

One thing to definitely remember… if you take a cab (taxi) in Beijing… Always always always get one who’s license plate number begins with the letter B they are the honest ones.  Learned this the hard way.  And the hotel was NO help… Took a cab to the Temple of Heaven… 20 Yuan… cab back… 400 Yuan.  The hotel SCHMUCK said maybe the 400 one just took a different road back.  Okay… 2000%  more for the return trip?  Uh… yeah… maybe not so much.  ABD guide clued us in 2 days later that if you take a cab, the regulated ones (IE the ones that will not steal you blind) are the ones with plate numbers beginning with B…

Summer Palace

Up and at-em early in the morning (in a cab from the hotel by about 6:30 am) and headed to the Summer Palace.  DH was absolutely certain that they would not be open and we would be wasting time.  That was SO not the case.

Cab took us by the olympic stadium, which was totally cool.  Cab driver pointed out the stadium on the way by.  I think he thought I was a little odd being so excited about so many things like that, and I took pictures the WHOLE way.  Those who were on our adventure will not find that overly surprisng…

We got to the Summer Palace at about 7 am.  Bought our tickets and went in to look around.  The first thing you see inside the gate (which is deliberate, I found out later) is a huge rock.  This is a Feng Shui thing or somethng like that.  It is designed to hide what is inside from the front “door” so you start out imagining what is inside.  It allows you to imagine what you are going to see when you see around it.  I guess I didn’t think much about how much thought went into this kind of thing, but learning was a large part of the adventure overall.

If we had waited to get there when they officially opened, we would not have seen the man doing water calligraphy on the sidewalk.  We would not to have seen the couples ballroom dancing.  We would not have seen the dozens of kites soaring over the lake.  We would not have experienced the quiet peace of the place before the crouds show up.  The dancers were enjoying a mixture of chinese music and american music and were dancing their hearts out.  Some were dancing with opposite sex partners, some with same sex partners, some with invisible partners, but all were having fun.  The guy doing water calligraphy was neat.  He had a big broom that he dipped in a bucket and then painted the chinese characters on the sidewalk.

The kite flyers were the best though.  They are all older chinese people, mostly men, all up and down 17 arches bridge flying kites out over the lake.  They reeled in (literall, the kite string was wound on dinner plate sized reels) their kites by the time the buildings started to open.

We walked to the top of Longevity hill (pretty sure we walked up the rain run off trough.  I KNOW we didn’t walk up the “right” way… the way that has steps and is pathed and is easier… our way we had to goat up the hill but our way provided breathtaking views of the lake).  We saw the back side, the side that overlooked a different side of beijing.  We saw different buildings and different trees and different landscapes.

I loved the key-hole door in the wall into another part of a garden… other rock-scapes.

The only down side to the Summer Palace was that crouds came and some of the crounds were such incredibly normal children who had slide whistles that were horrible and shrill.

Packing is done.  All but my laptop and plug and a couple PSPs.  Puppies are off to the kennel and I’m off from work.

Next entry from airport or from China!

Reality is starting to set in.  We are going to China.  We are REALLY going to China and we are leaving in just a literal hand full of days.  Holy crap.

How will I pass the time on a 20 hour plane trip?  I have a reading book… I have a China book… iPod and computer but holy cow, to be stuck on a plane for almost an enitre day?!?

I’m really starting to get nervous.  I know it is stupid, there is nothing I can do to change or affect anything, but I’m still worrying and getting nervous.

Is it normal to be stressing?  I’ve packed and unpacked and repacked and unpacked thirty times today.  I am trying to figure out what I need to do to get everything packed efficiently and effectively for the trip.  I don’t know if I’m going to make it through the week or not… this is amazingly silly the way I feel…

It is starting to sink in.  We are going to be on a flight for almost an ENTIRE day.  That is a long time.  I don’t mind the flying so much, but the rest of the family is petrified.

Last night I found out that the Germany Christmas Markets still has limited availability for a party our size, but just barely.  Adding on an extra day in Munich post adventure to spend some time on our own exploring.

We haven’t gone on the first one yet and already we are looking at the next advenute and so soon.  The euro exchange rate is less than fantastic… sigh… 4 months to worry…

I should be calling in in about 3 hours to book the trip.

The next adventure begins…

Addendum…

Well, the trip, trip insurance and airfare are booked.  We will be spending The 20th of December through New Years Day in Germany!!!

Now comes the unpacking and repacking.

Youngest one is going to not take five pair of pants and eight pair of shorts and eleven shirts and three hats and four pair of sunglasses… and three pair of crocs and two pair of tennies.

Oldest wants to take the whole closet but will settle for only half.

In the middle, my morose one wants three pair of jeans to hold her through, and 4 t-shirts and 4 pair of socks and a hat.

Me?  I’m going to have to sort through to find the shorts I can wash out that will dry fairly quickly so they don’t mildew in my suitcase.  I think I’m going to take a few more shirts that wick sweat and that dry quickly (in an hour or so of hanging in the room) and weed out the shorts that don’t dry quickly enough (I’m pretty sure I know which are which and I’m pretty sure I have to take out some that are in there and put in some that are not).  In the end, I will lighten it up by a pound or so.  Then, I will get a smallish bottle to put dry detergent in so I can do some quick laundry whenever I need to.  I may even drop in some clothes pins to hang the stuff more easily on clothes hangers in the room.

I have been given a list of things that people at work want me to look for for them.  The most interesting is Dzi Bead Bracelets.  They are Tibetan in origin and there is a neat lady at work who says she can use all the luck she can get so wants their good juju…

It looks like I will be able to take out tooth brushes and tooth paste from the suitcase, as all of the hotels seem to give you those and shampoo and soap.

I am taking some drink mix in case I or any of us gets tired of bottled water… I found some yummy dark berry sugarfree stuff that I really like so I’m going to toss a few of those in.

Shanghai soup dumplings.

They are apparently very hot dumplings that are filled with soup.

It looks like there is meat (pork?) in the middle… It looks awesome… paper thinn dough envelope.

Big giant one is slurped with a straw.

The best time to eat is about 9 or 10 in the morning…

Shanghai-eese… that sounds really cool.

Stinky tofu w all kinds of sauces…  tofu soup…

Eating in Shanghai looks like it is going to be neat.  but now he is leaving Shanghai for somewhere else….

Would a silk Chinese dress make an interesting wedding dress?  (Wouldn’t want to be too traditional).

Would China be a good place to have an left of center wedding?

Funny to watch but I figure this love will likely last as long as the last.

The gods are smiling!