Our time in China was filled with many things – crowds, good food, good friends and seeing some amazing sites.  We drove almost two hours outside Beijing to see The Great Wall of China.  To see something of such historical significance was pretty exciting.  Years ago in my first year of teaching, I taught 6th grade which focused on ancient civilizations.  My class learned about all the civilizations, but focused on China for a classroom museum.  We actually built the Great Wall of China out of cardboard across our room for this hands on experience.  So, this is something that I had learned about in school and taught as a teacher, but never dreamed I would see.  It did not disappoint.

We decided not to just take a day trip from Beijing, but to spend a couple of nights at a place that someone recommended in the town of Mutianyu.  I am so glad we did this.  Driving almost two hours to and from the wall in one day would have been too much for all of us.  Instead, we were able to walk from our cottage about 8 minutes up the road to get to the ski lifts which took us up to the Great Wall.  Amazing!  The views were phenomenal.  The wall itself, stretched for miles either direction and looked like a snake on the ridge line.  We were blown away.  To think we were only seeing a small portion of the wall – it actually stretches a little over 13,000 miles east to west over China.  The beginnings of the wall were started over 2,000 years ago!  Just think of that!!  We walked along the ancient wall for about an hour looking from tops of towers.

The highlight for the girls, of course, was the toboggan ride down from The Wall.  Yes, you read it correctly.  They have a toboggan that you ride for about 10 minutes to reach the base of the mountain.  These were just like the Alpine Slides I rode as a kid at Boreal Ridge in Tahoe.  The kids liked it so much, we walked back up to the wall early the next morning to do it again before it became crowded and we didn’t get slowed down by the others 🙂

Just an aside for those of you who might have this on a bucket list or are planning a trip in the future, head to Mutianyu and stay at the Brickyard if you want to see The Great Wall.  It is such a charming place and a nice place to get away from the craziness of Beijing.  Look it up.  The restaurant is in an old schoolhouse and the main resort used to be a old tile factory.  We stayed in Grandma’s Place up the way that was an old locals home redone in a quaint style.

All in all, it was a great experience and lived up to everything I hoped it would be for all of us.

So, we are in China.  It is definitely not Japan.  Not that that’s a bad thing, but it’s different for sure.  Part of the reason for this journey is to see how other cultures live and how different they all are.  Beijing has a lot more people just to begin with – 11.5 million!  It’s dirtier and just plain crazier.  Even Dave and I were slightly overwhelmed walking the streets.  I think the one thing we miss the most are clean bathrooms and western toilets.  Holes in the ground are not what we are accustomed to, and the bathrooms in and of themselves are just dirty.  The other thing that is hard for us westerners to understand is the lack of freedom when it comes to the internet.  As I type this, it will be saved until we get out of China.  We are not able to access many sites – you tube (which the girls are sad about), any google account, including gmail, so Dave is off the grid, blog posts, instagram, etc.  It is definitely an eye opening experience.

We have been blessed with good weather once again.  After a day of rain, nothing too bad, we have had our third day in a row of blue skies.  Our friend, Julia, told us this never happens in Beijing.  Julia, is a friend of a friend that we were lucky enough to meet.  She spent three different days with us showing us all around Beijing.  We really couldn’t have navigated the city without her – definitely not the subways.  We are staying in the Waifujong District, which has so many people.  Julia showed us one street with food vendors where we got our first glimpse of live scorpions on sticks that are cooked to order.  The girls were having none of that and Dave debabted, but didn’t pull the trigger.

We navigated a day trip to the Forbidden City without Julia one day and survived.  What an amazing thing to see!  It is incredible how old, almost 600 years, it is and how they were able to create such large, beautiful, intricate buildings back then.  We ended up getting guide to show us around.  He was so knowledgable and was able to give us historical facts and tid bits that interested the girls.  The guide was actually a professor of ancient china history and had just toured a group of 20 professors from Boston University, so we were in good hands,  The girls were tropopers as we walked a lot and then were not able to get a cab and had to walk all the way back to our hotel – needless to say, they were exhausted.

Our hotel had a pool, so I think we were able to swim all 3 days, which the girls loved.  We were able to goto the old part of Beijing called the Hutong with Julia and we really enjoyed our day there.  Lots of shopping and food, people watching and seeing how people in Beijing live.  We enjoyed a great Chinese lunch that the girls loved as well.

Our last day Julia took us to a flea market.  What a cool thing to experience with a local.  Stands and stands of people selling all sorts of things, from beads, bracelets, necklaces and art work, to calligraphy brushes and ink wells, which Claire of course had to have.  Now that we are in Japan and there is no more origami paper, she has decided to take up Chinese calligraphy 🙂  Everyone loved checking out the stalls and ended up buying a few things, bracelets for $1, charms for under $1 – great deals, but we may run out of room in our carry on luggage soon!  We ended our day with a delicious dim sum lunch.

We are now on our way to The Great Wall as I type this.  It’s about 1 1/2-2 hours away.  We are staying in a great place up there called the Schoolhouse and are very excited to be in a small village amongst local people and have the ability to walk to the Great Wall.  Can you imagine that?!  I am very excited to experience this and see something so massive and historical.

I think we are realizing that big cities are just a different experience than being in small towns.  We head to the Great Wall, then onto Xi’an to see the Terracotta Warriors.  After that we hit two big cities – Shanghai and Hong Kong, but we will not be doing much site seeing – we are going to take this time to enjoy friends that live in those cities, see how locals live, eat delicious food and relax.  We knew the beginning of our trip was going to be little go, go, go, so we are ready to slow it down for all of us.

Once you read this, there may be a few posts that come up at once since we will be in China three weeks, but want to continue to blog our journey.  If you are following me on instagram, there will be many pictures that come up all at once too.  Sorry for that, just want to keep documenting our journey for our records and for all of you to see.

Thanks for following.  We miss you all and miss San Francisco 🙂

My first day in Beijing was a little crazy, but still cool.  First we woke up at 5:45 and did some things like packing and doing our hair, clothes and teeth.  We then left at 6 and got to the airport at 6:30 and found food because we were really hungry at the time.  Then we found our gate, got on the plane and got organized.  There were romotes in your arm rest.  You also had a screen in front of you and you could do games, movies and more.  I watched a movie called Back to the Future –  this movie is from the  80’s.  I also did a game, it was 3D golf.  I really did not know how to work it, so I quit the game.  I have to tell you guys this, there were these windows that had buttons – one was white one was grey.  If you preesed the grey one, the window would become darker, and if you pressed the white one it would become lighter.  It was good for sleeping.

After we got off the plane, we checked into the hotel and met a friend.  She took us to Hutong district one day and a flea market another.  The Hutong was cool with lots of shops.  We ate a delicious chinese lunch.  I really liked the pork.  At the flea market I loved the jewelry. I did not like the smoking – it gave me headaches.  I got a blue bead, an elephant charm, and a bracelet.  We had a pool at the hotel and we did synchronized swimming.  Beijing is very dirty and a lot of people smoke – I do not like that. You could not get you tube which I was devestated about.  You could not get google, gmail, or safari.  I am in the car now going to the Great Wall.  See you next time.

Today I am going to talk to you about Harry Potter World.  It was awesome! 🙂  Lots of waiting so you might want to go a hour early.  It felt like like you were at Hogwarts!!!  For those of you who haven’t read Harry Potter, you may not understand this.  It was like you were in the wizard school that Harry Potter went to – Hogwarts.

First we went to the Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey ride.  It was about a 60 or 80 minute wait, but it was worth it.  It was a little scary because you go up and you think you are going to fall out.  You have 3-D glasses on, so it looks like you were in the movie.  I closed my eyes for the scary parts.

Next, we went to Ollivander’s Wand Shop.  We went to a secret room and Mr. Ollivander was there 🙂  He was looking for someone to come up to his counter and he picked me!!!!! It was so cool.  He kept looking for a certain wand for me because the wand chooses the wizard.  I kept trying them out and on the third wand, it chose me!!!!!  I bought that same wand!!

Then we went to a delicious lunch at Three Broomsticks.  We got butter beer just like Harry Potter.  It tastes a lot like cream soda.  They even have warm butter beer in the winter.  I got mac and cheese.  After lunch we went to check out the candy shop, Honey Dukes.  I got a chocolate frog and blue bubble gum.  Claire and Lauren got Bertie Botts Every Flavor Beans.  They are like jelly beans, but they have every flavor.  When I say every flavor, I mean every flavor – ear wax, sprouts, pepper, grass and vomit.  They also have good flavors like toasted marshmallow, lemon drop and popcorn.  Soap was definitely not good!!

They had a train that looked like the Hogwart’s Express that Harry takes to school.  We went to a place where we could take a picture like we were on the train with a scarf and a wand.  I wore the Hufflepuff Scarf.  I was going to wear the Gryffindor one, but Lauren took that one, what a bummer! 😦  We also went to Dervish and Bangs, another store you read about in Harry Potter.  They sold capes that I liked, I wanted the Gryffindor one.  There was also a bracelet that had the Hogwarts crest on it that I liked.

It was a wonderful day!  We loved it!!!

Bye bye!  See you later!

Grace

For those of you who don’t know or are wondering, the girls will be homeschooled while we are away.  Who will be their teacher?  That would be me.  In my previous life, I was an elementary school teacher for 10 years, so hopefully this will go well. Will we have school every day?  How many hours?  Did I bring books?  These are all good questions that people have asked.  I’m not sure how it will go, we will probably not have school every day, and no we didn’t bring books.  I am blazing a new trail each day.  We are working with the internet – thank god for the internet!!  We have a schedule that we are attempting to implement beginning this week, but part of the fun of this year is to learn as we go and use what we have at our disposal.  For instance, the train/subway schedules are in 24 hour time, so the twins have been learning how to figure out what time 13:30 is.  We pay for our train and subway tickets each day with them counting out the money and how to buy the ticket from the machine that is in Japanese.  Not an easy task as it took Dave and I awhile our first few times.  We talk about how many yen is worth a dollar – currently 120.  Thank goodness for apps – we have a great conversion app that the girls use to find out what something costs.  Claire was to read the book Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes by Eleanor Coerr for school this summer and it was the perfect complement to our trip to Japan, so I read it to the twins as well.  It is about a girl who was a baby at the time when the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.  They are all very interested in the story and can’t wait to visit the memorial to Sadako when we arrive in Hiroshima later this week.  History is a constant lesson on this trip.  And as a complement to that book as well as the culture of Japan, they have been learning origami as their art lesson.  They are all getting really good at making paper cranes, see pictures below.  And seeing how a whole culture lives, eats, dresses, behaves, etc. is a daily lesson we all learn from.

The girls have also learned how to write haikus, traditional Japanese poetry.  A haiku consists on 3 lines with 5 syllables in the 1st line, 7 syllables in the 2nd and 5 in the 3rd.  While haikus are historically supposed to be about things in nature,  you can veer off that path.  Below we have shared some of the girls haikus.   I will start you off with my attempt.  For those of you who know me, I love sushi.  Unfortunately, it is not as common as one would think here in Japan.  The food has been amazing, but deep fried tempura and ton katsu, or bowls of warm udon noodles – while delicious – is not what I envisioned every day.  Sushi is what I envisioned.  So, this was my attempt last night at a haiku when of course we didn’t have sushi for dinner.

I want sushi

Why is there no sushi here?

We are in Japan

By: Kelly

This view is pretty

With trees and mountains and more

I could gaze and gaze

By: Claire

Taylor Swift sings songs

Taylor Swift has good music

Went to her concert

By: Grace

Beautiful Japan

See Mt. Fuji through the mist

Cherry blossoms bloom

By: Grace

The Eiffel Tower

Croissants, hot cocoa so good

Beautiful Paris

By: Lauren

Beautiful peaches

Ripe and ready peaches good

Delicious peaches

By: Lauren