Beijing The Final Act

To my amazement, I am still talking about our trip. Unfortunately, things have been busy since we got back to UB, so I haven't been able to finish this up as quickly as I would have liked. However, this will be the last post about our amazing trip.We were able to be in Beijing during the Chinese New Year. What an incredible experience! We had never seen or heard so many fireworks in all of our lives. The pictures do not do justice to the display. At midnight of the Chinese New Year, the entire sky was lit up, and it sounded like the city was exploding. We love fireworks, but there were so many that we were actually scared.While we were there, we couldn't pass up an opportunity to see the Bird's Nest and the Water Cube. I doubt that there are any other Olympic sporting event locations as iconic as these. The Beijing games were exciting, and it was great to be able to see the places were Olympic history was made. Josh also decided that he could have been the mascot. Check out that pose! The day after Chinese New Year, we visited the Temple of Heaven. It was customary for the emperor to offer a sacrifice to Heaven the first day of every new year. This practice ended over a hundred years ago, but we got to see actors present what that event was like.

After nearly getting crushed at the Temple of Heaven, there were a lot of people there, we went to Tienanmen Square.

Tienanmen Square and the monuments and buildings in and around it were very impressive. It was also a great place to get a sense for China's cultural situation and future.

Our final stop in Beijing was the train station. After a week in China, we boarded an early morning train and headed north-west into Mongolia.

The scenery along the way was fantastic. Just outside of Beijing we began cutting our way through mountains. On the other side of the mountains, the land flattened out and soon became quite desert like. We even got to experience our first dust storm!

Another interesting element of our journey was the changing of the train wheels. The track gauge in China is different than the track gauge in Mongolia. Because of this, the train wheels have to be changed every time a train crosses the boarder. Therefore, the last stop in China was about four hours long. The local crews lifted each car, disconnected the current wheels, and connected the proper size wheels. All of this may have been a bit more interesting if it hadn't been midnight at the time.

When we awake the next morning, we knew that we were back in Mongolia. The landscape had changed from a red dirt to white, everywhere. We saw numerous herds of animals including this herd of camels. If you look closely, you can see their humps. So far, these are the only live camels that we have seen in Mongolia. I say live camels because we have begun eating camel meat on a regular basis. Just another one of those crazy foods to add to the ever growing list. Actually, camel meat is very good.

We had a wonderful time on our trip, but we were happy to get back to Mongolia and the work that we are doing here. The semester has been flying by, but we have had a renewed purpose and sense for why we are here. Our time away was refreshing and renewing. Now we are pushing towards the end of our first year and looking forward to the future.

Rolling with the Pandas

One of our last days in Beijing we visited the Beijing Zoo and Aquarium. The best part about the zoo was the Panda exhibit. We love pandas, but it is difficult to find one outside of China unless you visit a large zoo. We were able to see one in Chiang Mai, but the Beijing Zoo has ten. The picture above is of five young Pandas rolling around and chowing down on some bamboo.

Would you believe this little guy didn't even offer us any. How rude! That is okay. I don't think bamboo would have settled well with our systems. This one reminded us of Jennifer's dad.

This guy was chillin' outside (literally, it was much colder in Beijing than it had been in Chaing Mai). We caught him waking up from a nap. Notice the tongue.

I think it may have been "stick your tongue out at the American" day at the zoo. However, this Coon was originally from North America, so he should have been a little nicer. It was kind of funny to see a North American Raccoon on display at the zoo. A little taste of home. Except most we see in the States are on the side of the road a little less lively than this one.

It was a little cold the day that we were there. This Jaguar decided to try and stay out of the cold as much as possible. At least we got to see his head.

It seems all creatures have the show-offs. You would have thought this guy was a king or something.

This was a little sad. Many of the cages were small and not well heated. This monkey's cage was open to the cold. We didn't even realize that there was a baby until I zoomed in with the telephoto lens.

This is also sad. Would you believe that this is the first yak that we have seen since we moved to Mongolia? We had to go all the way to China to see a yak. Apparently, not many yaks live in UB.

The Beijing Aquarium was located inside the Zoo. Visiting both made for a full day of walking. However, we did go to the Forbidden City two days before and the Wall the day before. Walking was a big part of our time in Beijing.

The Aquarium was not the largest that I have ever been to, but it was still very impressive.

While we were there, we got to see a Dolphin and Seal show. This was the first one that Jennifer had ever been to. It was pretty neat even though we couldn't understand anything that was being said.

Walkin' on the Wall

This one has been a long time in coming, but it was the best part of our time in Beijing. Our third full day in Beijing, we were picked up in the morning at our hostel by a rented vehicle, driver, and tour guide. We picked up Matt and Jess at their hostel then headed to the Great Wall of China! It was nice to reconnect with our teammates after a week apart and catch up on all the fun things that we had done. It was also great knowing that we were on our way to the Great Wall. Growing up, this was one of those things that we always wanted to see but never thought we would get to. We have been so blessed! We visited the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall. It is a little farther from Beijing than another section, so it is not as crowded. The wall was considerably higher than the entrance, so we took a chair lift up. To get down, we rode on the tobbagin run. You can see part of the track in the bottom left part of the picture. It was extremely fun!This was our tour guide on the ride to and from the wall. Once we got to the wall, she let us go off on our own. She suggested that we go to the right because it was a more challenging section.We ended up climbing more steps than we had in a month. It was certainly challenging but well worth it. There is an old Chinese proverb that says no man is truely a man until he has climber the Great Wall. That day, we all became men, even the women!We deffinately did not want to goof up going down these stairs. One little trip and a person would go a long way before he or she stopped. Evey one of us had at least one little wobble.Since a picture is worth a thousand words, here are a few more for you to look at.And you thought all the leaning things are in Pisa! Actually I just had the camera croocked at the right time.There was a snack vendor set up on the Wall. After our hike on the first half we stopped and grabbed the world's best power food, a Snickers! There is nothing like eating a Snickers on the Wall, except for the fact that they were really cold and kind of like eating a rock.
Here is Jennifer after her ride off the Wall. The slide run was great fun! Our time at the Wall was amazing! It was incredible to walk on such history. We are so thankful for this opportunity!

Beijing Part 1

Our fourth and final destination was Beijing, China. We decided to visit China this year because we have a Chinese visa. When we came to Mongolia last August, we had to get a Chinese visa to transit through Beijing. However, instead of getting a one-time transit visa, we got a one-year multi entry visa. We figured that we had already paid for this one, and we wanted to visit China sometime anyway, so why not go this year? Other than Chiang Mai, this was the main stop of our trip. Our original plan was to fly into Beijing, spend a week sight-seeing, and take the train from Beijing to UB with our teammates. A few weeks before we left UB, our teammates were asked to visit a friend's family in the country before our return date, so they decided to return a little earlier than us. After we parted ways in Bangkok, we were on our own mostly until we arrived back in UB. We were alright with that though. We were a little nervous but not about to miss out on an opportunity to visit China.

Our first day was interesting. We were unable to buy our train tickets before we left UB, so our first order of business was to get tickets back home.After spending the entire day trying to figure out how to get train tickets to UB, we ran into the right person and ordered our tickets. While we were waiting for them to be processed and delivered, we took a walk. This building stands not far from the train station. It is part of the old city wall built during the Ming Dynasty about 500 years ago. This was the south-east corner of the city and a primary defense point against attack. Attached to this fortification was a section of the wall about 1.5 kilometers long. We had nothing else better to do, so we walked the whole section.

This section of the wall was hollowed out to make way for the first train line heading out of Beijing. We thought it was pretty neat to be that close to such history, but this was only a drop in the bucket compared with the next two days.

After the train ticket ordeal, we got down to being tourists. The first and only order of business for the next day was visiting the Forbidden City. It was our only planned event because it is, after all, a city. This is a picture of the iconic Tiananmen gate of the Forbidden City that looks out across Tiananmen Square. It is also the primary entrance for the Palace Museum.

Here is Jennifer in front of the gate. It was quite chilly the day we went, and we had just come from Thailand. Come wind, come cold we were not going to be discouraged from spending time at such an historical site.

The Forbidden City, named so because no commoners could enter, was built during the Ming Dynasty some 560 years ago. It is a self-contained city and the largest palace complex in the world that once housed around 10,000 people. Not all sections are open for visitors, but a large portion is. We were able to get an audio tour program in English that was GPS tracked and would tell facts and stories about the palace as we walked. Walk we did! We spent 5 hours roaming around the palace but did not see the entire place.

There are multiple palace buildings with thrones throughout the complex used by the different emperors for different events. This throne however was the grandest of them all and was located in the central and largest palace building.

There were different galleries throughout the complex that highlighted life in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. This was one of our favorites out of the display items, a pair of chopsticks made out of gold and jade. As outrages as this might seem, we also saw a golden toothpick.

Joshua stood at the door and knocked, but there was no answer. It was probably a good thing. Our feet and legs were already worn out. We had a blast, but there was only so much we could do.

This is a rare thing in Beijing. Jennifer is standing alone in a large open area. There are hundreds of buildings, walkways, alleys, and open courts throughout the Forbidden City. A few times we got a little lost and had to keep walking until we found where we were again.
We had such a great time! It was incredible to be able to walk around in the Forbidden City, a place that neither of us ever thought we would get to visit.