Sacred Mount Tai and Qufu

We decided to do another trip last weekend.  It was to visit Mount Tai and Qufu.  We had been to both places before, but we wanted to go again with a different tour.

Saturday morning, we caught a bus at 9 a.m. that would take us to the train station.  We made it with an hour or so to spare before our train left.  It took us a few minutes to figure out the chart for when the trains leave, we hadn't ridden on one yet this year.  It is a nice way to travel in China.  It was a little over a half hour to travel about 100 miles.

We were met at the train station in Tai'an by the tour guide and two of the other BYU teachers that were going on this trip.  The others were to arrive about 45 minutes later, so we had a little wait.  Kevin, the guide, took us out to the bus so we could sit down.  After the others arrived, we were taken to a local restaurant for a late lunch.

Mount Tai, one of four sacred mountains in China.  Lots of stories about the emperors of China coming here for inspiration.

There was a marathon going on that weekend at Mount Tai, so it was hard to get very close to the place we needed to be.  The bus dropped us off and we had a little walk to get to the visitor center.  Mount Tai is one of the four sacred mountains in China and has a long history as a place for emperors and wise men to visit for inspiration.  There is a Daoist temple near the top.

One way to take supplies up and down the mountain.

We were driven by a shuttle bus to the place where we could get a gondola ride to the top.  It's rather a fun ride.  Can be a little nerve wracking for those that don't trust gondolas or like the heights.

We passed a long, long line of people waiting in line for the gondola ride back down to the shuttle bus.  When we got to where we could go up to see the Daoist temple, the guide pulled us all together and explained that the line for the gondolas was extra long because one of the two gondola lines was down, and that was the one that we had planned to take down.  It was going to be a 4-5 hour wait!  He explained our options as being wait in the line for that long time, or go down by the stairs.  Going down the stairs would take about two hours, but is was very steep with no hand rails or anything to hang onto.  In some places, you would have to turn around and go down backwards because it was so steep!  There were two people that just turned around and got back into the line right away.  There were four of us that decided we would start on the stairs right away and then when the rest of the group that had decided to take the stairs down caught up with us, we could join them.

One of the women had been wearing open toed shoes and her feet were freezing.  It was quite a cold day up on the mountain with the wind chill making it even colder.   She has a skin condition that makes if torture for her to wear closed toed shoes from a fungus or something she picked up in Japan twenty years ago.  She lives in Texas, so going without shoes isn't much of a problem for her there.  Is was a problem at Mount Tai where it is cold and windy.  I also began thinking about what going down over 7000 steps would do to my knee and we decided that we better go stand in line for the four or so hours it would take.

The alternative way down if the gondolas stop working.  And, this was just the 3,000 steps to the shuttle area.  There are over 9,000 steps from bottom to top.  Some people  do it as a right of passage.  

The guide suggested that we talk to the guards and explain about my knee and the woman's feet and see if they could get us through the line faster.  We decided to try that, but the guide left to be with the rest of the group while we tried to make the guards understand what we were asking.  As we were trying to explain to the guards, two Chinese girls that spoke English fairly well, stopped to see how they could help us.  We explained the situation to them and they started talking to the guards.  At first, it didn't seem like the guards were going to give in to us, but the girls kept talking and they eventually took pity on us.  We were so grateful for the small gift of those two girls!

We by-passed all those people who had been standing in line for many hours, keeping our heads down the whole time, and feeling bad that they still had to stand there while we were being escorted to the gondola.

Once we were down to the place where we caught the shuttle buses, we had to wait for all the others.  We found some rocks by the side of the path that we could sit on to wait.  We spent the time getting to know each other  better and talking to people that passed us by.  There were two different couples that came and sat down to talk for some time.  One was a man who was raised in Shanghai, went to the US and married his wife that was from Taiwan.  They currently live in Calgary, Canada, and have for many years.   The other man was also from Shanghai, but his wife was from Hong Kong.  They had both gone separately  to the US for school, met there and lived in the San Francisco area.  It was a pleasant talk with both.  Lots of others that only had a little bit of English asked for have photos taken with us.

The two people that had turned around right away were about an hour behind us.  Then it was another hour or so before the rest of them got down.  They had decided to try and take the gondola after all and the line was starting to move fast then.  The original plan had been to finish on Mount Tai about 5, and then travel to Qufu where our hotel was and have supper there.  Then we would have time to watch a local entertainment show that they put on at the hotel at 8 p.m.  That didn't happen.  Instead, we arrived at the hotel at 9 p.m., had a late supper and  went to our rooms.

David and I got to our room and it was freezing inside!!  China turns off the heat by March 15, whether you need it still or not.  As I went to close the curtains to see if it would make it any warmer, David was talking to the guide to see if we could get the heat turned on in the room.  As  I got to the curtain, I noticed that a wind was blowing the curtain.  I looked for a heat vent, but instead I found the window wide open!  I tried to close the window, but it was stuck and would not close all the way.

After several attempts, David came over and was finally able to get it to close, but now we had an extra cold room and we were cold from our trip on the mountain.  We left our coats, clothes and shoes on until just before we hopped into bed.  When the hotel person came to check on the heat and told us there was no heat in the room, she showed him where an extra comforter was on the shelf that we could use if we weren't warm enough.  Not helpful...

After breakfast the next morning, we hurried out the door to the opening of the gate to Confucius home complex.  They do a ceremony every morning.

Opening the gates ceremony.  This isn't all of it, just two parts of it.

After the ceremony, we quickly went to the area that we needed to go to for tickets.  We were pretty close to the first ones in line. As we were sitting waiting for the guide, an old gentleman with about four teeth left came up to sit near a group of us.  He had an old passport that he carried with him.  He had traveled to many  places and was very proud of the fact.  Sometimes you get beggars that just want money, but he wanted to talk.  Some of them showed him their passports.  Then someone decided that it would be a nice gesture to give him an American dollar bill, so they did.

Confucius scholars waiting to go through the compound gates to go to the graduation type ceremony.

Gates into the compound. I believe they said there were five gates to go through, and each one was for different levels.

As we made our way through the compound, which has a lot of buildings and ancient trees in it, there were a lot of groups of children, elementary and junior high age, touring also.  These groups were so thrilled to see all of these Americans there.  We had lots of pictures taken of us and with us.  They gathered around us in groups and tried to speak the little English some of them knew.  Their chaperones were having a hard time dealing with keeping them all moving along.

The sign says to not touch the tree, but of course everyone touches it. Maybe it only says that in English...

On the roofs of the houses, they have animals that depict the rank of the person who lives in that house.  This is the house of a very important person because they have eight animals.  I have seen as many as twelve, but that was in Beijing.

This juniper tree in the Confucius Compound is 2,500 years old.  They have plaques hanging on each of the trees stating how old they are.  Most are between 200 and 500 years old.  They try preserve them by  putting the metal bands around them and filling in parts that are starting to split.  

This was the family well in that served the Confucius Family.  The plaque was partially destroyed during the cultural revolution.  Confucius family was particularly persecuted during that time because they were teachers.  The last direct line son of Confucius left China to live in Taiwan when Chiang Kai-shek left the country.

The only remaining wall of the house the Confucius grew up in.

This is called the roofline of "frenemies." Keep your friends close and our enemies closer.  They wanted to keep an eye on the people that were their enemies, so they lived close to them to keep an eye on them.  It helped keep balance in the government.   

Just a cute picture of a cute couple in love!

Pomegranate flower.  It is the flower planted for the sons of the family.

Pomegranate tree.  The trunk is so thin and spindly.  

When we finished with Confucius' Compound, we were taken by horse-drawn wagons to make the trip to the cemetery.  Ten of us were put in a closed carriage with one horse pulling us.  By the time that horse got to the cemetery (a distance of about three km), he was pretty tired.

Our wagon going through the gates between the walls to the city.

He was pretty tired by the time we got there.

While we were waiting for the other wagon of our group to get there, we started talking with some junior high age kids.  They were so excited and we had lots of picture taking.  We didn't even know when the rest of the group arrived.  The kids all had to leave and we looked around and we were by ourselves. No group!

David and I started walking in the direction that we were sure they had gone, but we didn't see them.  Fortunately, David had the guide's phone number and called him.  We hurried and caught up.

They had shuttle buses that take you around the cemetery.  You can only be buried there if you are a descendant of Confucius.  They don't allow head stones to be placed there anymore because even though it is a large cemetery,  they will run out of room.  They stopped putting up head stones in 1947.

The guide said these were orchid flowers, but on closer look, they didn't look like orchids.  Sometimes the way the names of things translate, doesn't work very well.

The mounds are the graves.  Each year, the family members will come back on Tomb Sweeping day and add more dirt to the mound to show their respect for their ancestors.  If you see a small mound with fresh dirt, it is where a new grave has been started.

Some of the tombstones that are still left.  Since 1949, you can't put anymore gravestones up.  They are afraid of running out of room to bury all of the ancestors there.  The graveyard is 28 hectares in size.  Pretty big, but when you are talking about over 500 years of ancestors...

We went back to the hotel, checked out of our rooms and had a late lunch.  Then we were taken to the train station to wait for over an hour for our high speed train trip back to Jinan.  It was a very exhausting two days.  Glad to be home.

Hospital Visits for David... All Week...

As I posted a little bit about David being in the hospital last Sunday, I will fill you in on what has been happening with that.  David got sick on our Yangtze River trip and after we got home on Saturday, he decided that he better see Dr. Tricia and get some help.

They treated him with an IV of antibiotics and antiviral medicines and gave him breathing treatments to help relax the airways.  They also did a blood test, and a CT Scan of his lungs.  They did the treatment twice on Sunday and wanted him to come back again on Monday morning to get another treatment.  She also wanted him to get an ultrasound of the abdominal organs to see if there were any problems there.  His lungs were free of pneumonia and no problems in the organs, so they decided that he had a bronchial infection and after another IV antibiotic treatment on Monday morning, they released him from the hospital. 

I taught David's class on Monday morning and then mine while he went to the hospital.  I contacted my class monitor and instructed her to have my class meet me in the classroom where David teaches, because I didn't think I would have time to close up his classroom and then get over to the building where I teach, and have time to get set up.  Everything went well.

David and I went back to the hospital Tuesday afternoon to get the results of his blood test.  Dr. Tricia seemed to want to talk a lot, so we were too late to get supper at the canteen and decided to buy KFC because it is on our way home and close.  The air quality that day was 500 AQI!  You could taste the pollution in the air! We ordered our meal and sat down to eat.  David tried to swallow his first bite and his throat wouldn't work!

He started coughing and gagging.  I was afraid of him passing out right there in the restaurant.  He eventually got the gagging under control and went into the restroom and get the coughing under control.  David came back rather pale and he was afraid to eat or drink.  We talked about whether to pack up our food and go home to finish, or to try and finish eating there.

We stayed there and he was able to finish his meal, but it really wasn't a pleasant feeling.  Several times that evening, he would start coughing and have the same sensation of his throat closing off.  He was able to get through the night.  The next day, we had lunch with Eva, and after I left for my painting class, David was still talking with Eva when he started coughing and couldn't stop.  It had him scared to even talk anymore!  (If you know David, you know that it was pretty bad if he stopped talking!)

David was back at the hospital on Thursday afternoon getting checked out by Dr. Tricia and Dr. Hu.  They decided that what he had was AHR - Airway Hyper Responsiveness.  This is a hallmark of asthma and it has to be treated similar to it.  David has some pills to take that reduce inflammation, and we have a humidifier (a gift from one of the Chinese teachers that we have lunch with) for sleeping with at night.  He still has some episodes of waking up with his throat closing off because we haven't been able to start the humidifier until tonight.  We hope it helps.

We went on a short trip this weekend to Mt. Tai and Qufu, Confucius birth place.  I'll write about that tomorrow because I'm too tired to do it tonight.

Qing Ming Day 4. Dam Pictures and Going Back to Jinan.

This morning we were up even earlier and had to be done with breakfast, check out, and be waiting for our group to go to on the Three Gorges Dam tour.  It was a mad house trying to get off the boat.  We had to go through another boat to reach the dock and once on the dock, we looked at the long stairway we would have to climb (no elevator this time) and decided to try and get on the trolley car to take us to the top. 

We went over to the trolley car and found out that it was only 2 Yuan to ride it, but the problem was the crush of people trying to ride it.  There were three of us, David, Helen, and I that tried it.  We had to push our way in and stay close together, because if we didn't, others would push in front of us.  No nice little queue to get on.  Fortunately, with our larger size, we were able to for a barricade and get on right after an old gentleman with a cane that was being put helped on by his daughter.

They took us on buses to the security center.  We had to get off the bus, go through scanning machines, walk through the building, and get back on the bus.  I think the best part of the tour is riding the escalators up and up and up and up to the top where you can have a bird's eye view of the area.  David and I got separated from each other and I couldn't find him, so I decided to walk up to the very top of the look out.  While I was up there, a woman just had to have her picture taken with this American!

David finally called me so I made my way down.  As we started our trek back to the bus, another woman stopped me to get a picture with me.  It is rather fun, complete strangers asking for pictures with you. 

The Bird's Eye view of the dam.

Boats and barges waiting to go through the locks.

Some of the people in our group had to get to the train station so they could get the high speed train back to their cities.  We were taken to the airport and had to hurry to get our tickets and get to the gate.  They were almost a half hour late loading our plane.  We made it home okay.  Happy Qing Ming!

Qing Ming Festival - Day 3. White Emperor City, Shennong River

How good of a vacation is it if you don't get to sleep in?  We were up early again today to have breakfast and get ready to meet our group that was going to the White Emperor City.  I looked at the stairs that we would have to climb from the boat up and my heart dropped to my shoes, but after looking at the stairs, I realized that there were escalators that would take you up most of the way!  What a relief! 

The way up!  The white covered parts are the escalators.  Whew!

This was the original gate to the city. They wanted to preserve it and not let it get covered in the water, so they took it apart piece by piece, labeled each piece and then reconstructed it here at the site of the new city.

We were loaded onto buses for a short ride to the site where we could go across a bridge to the island where White Emperor City is located.  Then the guide told us that we would be climbing 350 stairs today!  Yikes!  I didn't know what I had signed up for!  Nothing to do but set my mind to it and take it a step at a time!  It was a beautiful climb, with trees covering the stairs.  We could have hired a porter to take us up to the top, but one look at those little men who chain smoked cigarettes, the fragile looking chairs we would be sitting in, and the long stairs snaking their way up the mountainside, we decided that the exercise was going to be good for us!  

White Emperor City was built high on this spot because is was a strategic place to guard the river from.  They didn't have to move any of the buildings when the dam was built because it was already so high up.

I took this after we had climbed about the first 50 steps.

The heroes monument at the top.  It was a monument to a great general in the army of early China.

 The Dragon represents the male leader (king) and the Phoenix represents the female leader (queen).

 A Phoenix.  Looks like he's ready to pick this guy up.

The dragon.  He's ready to push this guy over.

The White Emperor City is known as the "Land of Poetry in China." Many famous poets have come here to be inspired and write.  One poet claimed that he always wrote better poetry when he was drunk.  I don't know about that, but that was his claim.  

Some of the famous poets of China that had come to this area to write.

This scene is on the back of the 10 yuan bill.

We think these are orchids that were growing along the walk back to the bus.  Too beautiful to pass by and not get a picture.

White Emperor City also has legends and stories about the Three Kingdoms in China.  They held China together and helped unite them.  There were three kings that reigned one after another and this takes place about 1700 years ago.  We were also able to see one of the 'hanging" coffins that they have taken down to study and is now on display.  

Painted glass figures of the White Emperor.

Painted glass figures of the White Emperors advisers and helpers.

This is the hanging coffin that they brought down so they could study it.  There is a female skeleton inside the slit.  People put money in the glass display.  

We were late getting back to the boat for lunch, but it wasn't our fault.  The guide was a little long-winded, so we had to  really book-it to get back to the bus for the drive back to the boat dock and then down the stairs.  One section was a down escalator, but the rest were stairs.

A waterfall along the gorge.

We traveled through two gorges that afternoon, Outang Gorge and the Wu Gorge.  One of our group had paid an extra 600 RMB to get a "Presidentail Suite." It gave  him a private deck on the front of the boat.  He invited all of us to come enjoy the gorges that afternoon.  It was great riding out front and enjoying the scenery and the company.

A bridge spanning the Yangtze River.

Later that afternoon, when we arrived at the mouth of the Shennong River, we were boarded on a scenic tour boat for the trip up the Shennong River.  They drive you down this beautiful river and stop at a dock where you get out and board some large sampan boats.  They have benches on them and they paddle you down the the river and tell you about the history of the area and people. 

These guys decided to go fishing.

These are the sampans that we traveled on to hear the history.  The benches were not that comfortable.

Going home after a days work.

After the trip on the Shennong River, we were taken back to the ship.  They had to hold dinner back about an hour because we were really late getting back.

Qing Ming Festival. Day 2 - Yangtze River, Fengdu and Shi Bao Zhai Temple

We were up bright and early to meet our group to go to Fengdu, also known as "The Ghost City."  It was a very rainy morning.  We were prepared for the rain with our raincoats and umbrellas, but in the end they seemed almost ineffective against the heavy rain that we experienced that morning.  Eventually, we took off our raincoats because they we were just too hot, and just used the umbrellas.

Wet, rainy, dippy start to the day.

There are a LOT of steps at Fengdu.  It is mountainous country, so it is all lot of up and down.  I think the guide told us that there were around 195 steps up to see the sights we were going to see.  It is nicknamed, "Ghost City" because they believe that this is where you have to pass by the guards to heaven and hell when you die. 

This guy and his companion below greet you at the gate of the stairway going up.

If you look close, you can see that he is missing some of his fingers.  I wondered who had bitten them off.  Styrofoam doesn't taste good.

This guy greets you at the gates of heaven.  It would scared the bad out of me...

This one greets you at the gate of heaven.  He doesn't want you going in with any of your bad traits.

When you cross over this bridge that everyone is lined up to cross, with the one you love, it is supposed to seal your union forever.  With the rain, we decided that if nothing had broken us up in 42 years, crossing a bridge wasn't going to change anything.  Just didn't think it was worth going back out in the rain to do it. 

At least we were dry inside this temple as long as you stayed out of the center part.

An interesting tree that was growing around another tree.  David pointed it out, so I took it's picture so he could always remember it.  (he, he)

When the Three Gorges Dam was built, a lot of these places had to be moved to higher ground to be preserved.  The statues and buildings were  brought up and placed in new buildings that looked like the old buildings.  This particular place is based on the Taoism religion.  It has a lot of thoughts about how you have to pass by certain gods in order to go to a better place.  They really look very frightful and scary. 

David and I were tired and didn't want to climb anymore, so we told the group leader that we were going to go down and wait for the rest of our group at the visitor center.  The whole time the rain hardly let up.  It was really kind of miserable.

I could probably make up a story about why this guy is in the temple because I don't remember, but he was kind of cool looking.

When we arrived at the visitor center, we found some seats where we thought we would be seen when they came.  While we were waiting, I wanted to take a picture of this magnificent wood carved monument to Fengdu.  There were five Chinese tourists who were trying to take a group photo, and they looked like they wanted to have someone take a photo.  I offered to take it for them.  Then I continued to take photos of the wood monument.  When I came around to the other side again, the women of that group decided they wanted a picture with me at the monument.  We had a group photo,then each woman wanted a photo separately with me. 

After we had lunch at the ship, there was a silk embroidery demonstration at the shop on the boat that I wanted to go to.  Two of the women that went were from our BYU group and we introduced ourselves to some of the women we sat near.  The woman next to me was from Isle of Wight, off the south coast of England.  Penny was so fun to sit next to!  We kept joking with each other and had a fun time.  We kept talking after the demonstration was over and got to know each other.  We seemed to have a lot in common in our life experiences.

The afternoon excursion was to an ancient pagoda called "Shi Bao Zhai."  It was build high in a mountain top so that it wasn't necessary to move, however, the waters of the rising Yangtze River did threaten to flood it.  The have built a high wall around the base to prevent it from being flooded in the future.  The path to get to the temple is now underwater, so they build a swinging bridge for people to cross on to visit the pagoda. They also dub it the "drunken bridge."  That is how you feel as you cross this bridge to get to the temple. It sways and moves, and it is so easy to lose your balance.

You see what I see?  I always knew it!! Ha!!

Since David and I have visited this site before, we crossed the bridge and then went back across because we knew that this was probably one of the best places to buy items that we wanted.  Those merchants were sure happy to see us!  We walked along and looked at things we were interested in, bargained and bargained.  It was rather fun.  When we noticed that the others from our group were coming through the street, so we had to say good-bye to all the fun we were having.

Yangtze River - Day One. Getting to Chongching

We couldn't leave until David had taught his two classes this morning. He let his class out about ten minutes early, hurried home, grabbed our packed bags, and climbed into the taxi Eva had ordered for us to take to the airport.  We didn't have a lot of time as it takes 45 minutes to an hour to get to the airport, depending on traffic, and our flight was scheduled to leave at 1:50 p.m.  The driver got us there at 1 p.m., we got our tickets, and had time to sit for about 10 minutes before they started loading the plane.

When we arrived at the Chongching airport, we didn't see a sign for BYU, so we tried to contact Marvin, the tour guide, to see what to do.  After a minute or two of standing there, one of the concierges came up with "BYU" on her phone screen.  She walked us through the airport to the parking garage and put us in a Didi taxi.  They are taxis that you hire when you want a little more upscale ride. Unfortunately, we had arrived at the start of drive time, so it took almost an hour to get to the restaurant where we were meeting the other in our group before boarding the cruise boat.

As we got close to the river and the driver was trying to maneuver through the slow traffic, a man in a yellow striped shirt was trying to talk to our driver through the window of the taxi.  The taxi driver ignored him, thinking he was one of the hawkers who were trying to get people to ride on their boats. It turned out, he was looking for us.  I guess the driver didn't understand he would be looking for us, because he just drove us to the hotel where we were to eat dinner and told us to go inside.

We walked inside and were basically ignored by the  man behind the desk.  When a woman who was sitting on the lobby called to the man, he finally indicated that we should take the elevator.  Inside the elevator, there are three buttons to push; 3, -2, -3.  We step back out and try to ask which button to push.  She asks the man and he said, "san," which is three in Chinese.  We tried to get clarification on up or down and the woman said down.  So, down we went.

Down let to a parking garage.  We were to be met by another driver down there? Where were we supposed to go?  I'm not leaving the safety of the elevator area without know where we are supposed to go.  After a few minutes of watching other people enter and leave the area, we decided we were NOT in the right place and we were going back up.  The elevator looked like it was going to come down to us, but would stop and go back up.  It did this about three times.  We didn't know where the stairs might be to go up, so we just kept waiting, hoping that someone would come down like we had, and then we could get back on the elevator and go up.

We called Marvin while we were in the elevator and he said to go UP to the third floor.  There we met the guide who was in the yellow and black striped shirt and had our dinner.  He looked rather relieved that we had gotten there.

Living on the Yangtze River.

We quickly at our meal and then they loaded us up in a bus and drove a short distance to the harbor.  It was about a fifteen minutes walk from the dock to the boat, so the guide suggested that we hire a porter to take our suitcases to the boat.  There were a lot of stairs to go down, so this was easier.

This building in the center is rather unusual looking in the day, but add the lights of the night and it really looks amazing!

A better close-up of that building.  The colors are constantly changing with different patters.  I don't think we saw any pattern the same during the time we were watching it.

After getting settled in our rooms, we went for a walk on the deck and watched the lights of the city come on.  There were boats that had dinner cruises going up and down the river and they were all lit up. It was fun to see.   When we left Jinan the temperature was in the 30's.  When we arrived in Chongching it was in the 80's.  We didn't stay up too long because we were tired, so we went to our room, got showers and went to bed.

Two of the river boats dinner cruise ships all lit up.

Dinner with Bob and Anna, David and the hospital.

Bob and Anna have been so happy with the fact that they are now eligible to go to Duke University that they wanted to take us to dinner in a special restaurant to thank us. Monday evening, we met them at the West Gate of campus and got on a bus to take us close to the area that the restaurant is located at. We still had to walk quite a way to get there, be we are used to that, this is China...

The style of restaurant was themed to be like old mountain restaurants from China long ago.  There were groups of men that were poor and they would get together and practice Kungfu martial arts and they got really good at it.  They became like Robin Hood and his Merry Men: rob from the rich and give to the poor.  They became a legend and had stories about what they did.

Dinner was really delicious! First was a soup with pork and kelp.  It had great flavor and the kelp was some of the best I have tasted.  It's not my favorite food, but this I liked.  They kept bringing out different foods that were really flavorful.  It was a fun dinner.

Most of the dishes they brought out.  

This was a picture of a meatball that is covered in glutinous rice and has an egg that was cooked in the middle.  David didn't care for it that much, but I rather liked it.  He just doesn't like eggs that much.

Sweet and sour egg plant with bread sticks.  We all like this dish and it didn't last long at the table.  Super yummy!

This was like crispy Chinese pancakes that were toasted in cinnamon.  This one didn't last long either.

Pork soup with the kelp.  That broth it was cooked in was so good!

They came home with us afterward because they needed help with their acceptance letters to Duke.  There are so many parts of English to learn that even when they pass these tests to be able to go to an English speaking country, there is still a lot more to try and understand.  They are doing great and Bob and Anna enjoy learning.

Jinan turned really cold this week.  We were sweltering in our classes on Monday, but on Tuesday, we were back to wearing coats.  Not just jackets, we needed winter type coats!

I posted about this tree last week and this week.  This week, the tops all added some pretty green leaves.   I couldn't resist another picture of how beautiful these bushes (tree-lets?) are.

David and I went on a trip to the Yangtze River this week, so this post is short.  I plan to post about the trip tomorrow, but I haven't had time to catch up with everything.  David ended up in the hospital today, so all the time that I had planned to use to write about the trip tonight, has to be put off.  David is okay.  He has a bacterial bronchitis that they wanted to be cautious about until they had checked to make sure that he didn't have pneumonia.  He received two sets of two IV treatments today, one with antibiotics and the other was antiviral.  They also had him do some breathing treatments with a steroid to help clear the phlegm out.  He already feels a LOT better.

David getting his breathing treatment.