the great wall of china--with my own eyes!

Beijing!

The city that I've crossed off my "Things-To-See-Before-I-Die-But-Probably-Won't" List! The day after Christmas, we climbed onto an airplane and flew a couple hours north to visit Beijing. HUGE city with lots of people. I felt so safe in our taxi, even though he was a speed demon. There was a couple times that I noticed the speedometer got in between the 120-125 kilometers per hour markings....gulp! It was fun, but squished. Poor Aimee! She was in between Ryan and I in the backseat, good thing we all love each other. Right, Aim?

We drove for another hour or so toward the mountains and then out of no where you see something that your eyes don't even believe. You see something ancient. Something that resembles

The Great Wall of China!

I didn't even realize that tears were streaming down my cheeks as we rounded the bend and appears this amazing landmark.
Cool facts about it:
-stretches over approx. 4,000 miles across mountains, deserts, and plateaus.
-the workforce that built it was mainly from three groups: soldiers, common people and criminals. Thousands of people died during and after construction.
-took decades to build. After the emergence of unified China in the Qin Dynasty (221-206 B.C.) the wall was a collective entity; but around 1700 years later it was enhanced and enlarged.
-it safeguarded trade routes such as the Silk Road.

The stretch of wall that we visited was Badaling and took a sky gondola. Oh gulp. My stomach was in my throat the entire ride up and down. I HATE heights!


We were attacked by vendors that wanted to sell you Great Wall stuff. There was a particularly persist ant older Chinese dude that kept bugging us to buy stuff. We kept saying, "Mayo Chen!" (no money) and "No!" and "Get Away!!" and kept avoiding him. Well, WE WOMEN kept saying that. Ryan, being the very polite and kind person he is, kept smiling and saying, "No, but thank you anyway." and he wouldn't try to run away like we were. This old guy wanted to sell a hat really badly. At one point, I saw out of the corner of my eye that this old guy had physically REMOVED Ryan's beanie that he had on his head and plopped this Russian-looking Chinese Star hat on his head! It was then the old guy exclaimed in broken english and as raspy as you can imagine, "You are beautiful!" Just the way he said it threw us into complete hysterics. Mom HAD to buy the hat for Ryan and he was a good sport, he wore it through his objections. I think it actually looked good on him. Lucky Chinese Star indeed!

Then we found the entrance! And onto the Great Wall we stepped!!

You can even see the old barracks where the troops were stationed on various parts of the wall.

I love this picture of Ryan. He's looking into the vast space of China and he's thinking something very smart and very profound, I'm sure of it.

We got lucky with the weather. We heard it was going to be very cold, with the wind blowing and with it being December. The sun was shining most of the time and the smog lifted. We were able to see the different levels of the mountains silhouetted against the sky. The wall goes on forever and disappears in the distance.

(Can you tell that I'm sleep-deprived, partying too hard and way too jet lagged to look normal?)

Mom and Aimee were peeeeeking!
Peekaboo! Kinda.




Ya, Aimee! Commit no nuisance!

My gorgeous mother that speaks mandarin and can lead us all by herself in Beijing!

I loved sharing this awesome experience with the ones I love!

christmas in zhujiajio, china

The coolest Christmas ever! We're in Zhujiajio, China enjoying the sights:

We rode in rickshaws through the alleys and by all the shops,




See how there's just enough room for one rickshaw? People just meander around in front of them and it's totally normal. No PERSONAL BUBBLES in China!


Visited a Buddhist Temple. (where the were a few Monk guys there worshipping)

A beautiful candle that was lit for prayer. I accidentally stepped too close to one, I was distracted looking upwards thus resulting in a little hole in my jacket. Oops.


Aimee in front of the Prayer Tree.





And to think that someone actually lived here once! There were pictures of the ancestors that lived there inside of little rooms off the main courtyard. You can spend hours and hours inside and still not get the entire story of a place. Absolutely amazing.


Oh! We got to ride in a Gondola! It's amazing what you can see from the water, going through the village.


The way they move is just man-power. They row in a figure eight motion and they take you upstream at a nice relaxing pace.

I didn't get this guy, he was just on top of the air conditioning unit. I remember Mom saying several times, "Don't ask 'why'...it's CHINA!" Ooooookaaaaay.





This bridge is like 400 (or something like that) years old, one of the oldest in Zhujiajio. It's a subject for the artists, many paintings, embroideries, and carvings.

(the "walls" on this bridge come up to my knees...safety is something you have to be responsible for. If you trip and fall overboard, it's your own fault!)



This was great. A lady kept bugging us to buy some fish that were in baggies. She didn't care that we already had one in our hands! You buy a lucky fish, then go up to the top of the bridge and drop it back into the water. Poor little lucky fish doing belly flops from 30 feet above the water. Here I am making my fish face, I'm concentrating really hard.

Two handsome guys in a Gondola.

Gorgeous pagodas are everywhere you look!



This guy answered his cell phone when he was paddling his Gondola--and ran into ours! We commented on how Americans have a hard time talking on a cell phone while driving, imagine trying to steer a boat with a single paddle!



We got to visit inside of a Silk Museum, hardly any electricity and no heat. There was an entire ROOM made up of this collage. This collage was only made out of Jade. Lots and lots of different colors, types, intensities, etc. of strictly jade. It was breathtaking. Oh, they had a big picture of Buddha. In front of him was a bowl that had money in it and a cushion where you could kneel and worship him. Interesting.

We got to see how they made silk by hand. What an intensely long process. Quite fascinating.



We went back through the alleys where we just had seen it from the rickshaws to all the little (cold!) shops weaving all through the city. Then onto my most favorite part...shopping!

We were famous everywhere we went. There was always someone that wanted pictures with us, and most of the time it was girls wanting pictures with Aaron!

This young artist was really cool and had some really good stuff. He was so talented and we bought this carving of the old bridge. We asked him if he would write 'Zhujiajio' on it and then autograph his piece of work. He sure did! We have this above our mantle. (I'll post pictures later)
I also got BLACK PEARLS!! Chalk one up for China!

Definitely one for the memory books. Loved Christmas!

"mr. jetlag wants to be my best friend"

Some Gilmore girl humor for you.

I know, I'm sorry that I've been M.I.A! This week I have done nothing else but unpacking, catching up on laundry and trying to stay out of the snow. (through record-breaking amounts...more on that later)

It's been a trip of a lifetime and I'll take you day by day on my China trip with me...starting with the first day of our travels:

Ryan and I had tickets on United for Economy class. Not looking forward to our 14 hour flight from San Fran to Shanghai, we dreaded this flight! (this was after our horrible flight from Boise to San Fran and stupid United being stupid) Our layover wasn't all that long, so we just hung out until the plane boarded.

The nice ticket lady at the counter approached us and asked us if we wouldn't mind moving to the exit row, because they needed to make sure that they had English-speaking people to help in case of an emergency. We said that we didn't mind, and she took our tickets.

15 minutes later, she returned them with a smile and said, "Enjoy your flight!" and we didn't notice until later that our tickets were now gold and had BUSINESS CLASS written at the top. Huh. What in the world?!

We boarded and went to our seats...sure enough. We were upgraded just like that. I can't even tell you how exciting this was, to have $5,000 seats for free!! The food was incredible, seriously rivaled a steakhouse or upscale restaurant. We had to turn away food because we were so full! Our seats could FULLY RECLINE, we had our own personal t.v. with cable t.v. and movies, all the drinks we wanted, our own bathroom, no kids so it was perfectly quiet and wonderful. It was amazing. Enough legroom for us to get up and dance..
It was heaven for 14 hours. HEAVEN! I honestly can't express through words how it felt. We were giddy! Absolutely giddy. We got to eat off of glass plates and dishes and we had personal tablecloths that were made out of satin! It was amazing
After our exhausting flight (it was nice, but it was still a long day) we arrived at the Shanghai International Airport. Everywhere we went we stood in lines. More and more lines. Customs, security, passport stuff, waiting for luggage, etc. A couple hours later, we were through! We made it to China. So surreal. I round the corner and see a guy in a Santa outfit. I just KNEW it was my Dad!

Sure enough, turned out to be him! Meeting us there was my Mom, brother Aaron and Santa my Dad. It was so fun to see some familiar faces at the end of a long long day. But it wasn't over yet! My sister, Aimee, was actually flying in also. We waited at the airport for another few hours until Aimee's flight and then we all went back to my parent's apartment.

As much as we tried, we only slept a little on the plane. This was what we looked like after our flight...sexy! I had only gotten an hour's rest before we'd left Boise because of our bags were too heavy and they all needed repacking. (see Mom's blog about what we stuffed our suitcases with)

Try to figure this out: We left the morning of December 22nd and arrived in Shanghai, China the evening of December 23rd. Hmmmm.....

And so it begins!