Summer Palace / Nicole's B-day

Yesterday was Nicole's Birthday and we had a pretty full day. During the day, we took a tour of the Summer Palace........

Before the summer palace, we stopped by this temple. The Ginkgo Biloba trees in this shot are over 600 years old.
Save the Rails!

At the Summer Palace.......

Ceilings are always built with tall people in mind.

Some pics from our b-day celebration for Nicole at the apt.

Soccer Game

Aaron and I went to a soccer game Wednesday night. It was a Beijing team vs. a Korean team. Beijing lost 1-0. I didn't have my camera on me, so here are a few of Aaron's pictures.

Weekend Trip to Great Wall

We made it to the Great Wall this weekend. It was a great trip. Easier to tell in pictures and captions, so here you go:

Went with my studio on Fri night. Everyone ended up joining the soccer game at the hostel we stayed at. Occasionally running down a long driveway when the ball was kicked over the "castle wall".

Simple rooms, rock hard beds, shower head in the middle of the bathroom. Did the job though.
Barbeque on Friday night at the hostel.

Breakfast at the hostel before heading to the Great Wall. Start the morning right with onions.

Below: Arrived at starting point for the hike to the Great Wall. We were expecting a little 5-10 minute easy walk, but it turned out to be a 3 hour hike/climb. The picture below was taken as we started the walk, and the arrow points to where we ended up. We ended up taking the wrong route at some point and followed a drainage route of the mountain rather than the designated path. A couple death defying hours later, we made it to the Wall. Luckily, the Wall did cross the mountain that we climbed, because we ended up on a different peak than the where the designated trail led. Words and pictures don't describe the greatness of the Wall or the journey it took to get there, but here are a few pics and words.

Nicole about to go vertical on of the areas where we had no other choice. Not up to ADA standards.

We asked ourselves what our mothers would think if they knew we were climbing this mountain with no gear, no park rangers, no cell phones, and no idea if we were going the right way. We managed to stop and smile for this picture for mother reassurance.

Finally made it to the wall and it was totally worth it.

This kid was able to make it to the top due to his ability to do this.

Here we are on the way down, joined back up with the rest of the group. It turns out that the designated trail actually had some crude ladders in certain difficult areas. Would've been nice on the way up.

After the hike you can grab some drinks/veggies/fruit floating around in this pool of water.

Gao Da with part of our lunch. Eatin' fresh in the neighborhood.

Lots of nuts and berries.

Watch out for this kid!

First week/second weekend

Finished up the first week of work and winding down the weekend now. Went to church today for Easter. It was an international church where you had to show your passport to get in due to government regulations. Also had first overnight business trip to a city about a 2 hour train ride away for the project that I was working on my first week. Driving around the city, it was hard to understand why we never got in a wreck because the traffic and driving is so crazy that you nearly get in a wreck every 2 minutes. We were supposed to have a meeting the first night and one the next morning, but the morning meeting was cancelled so we went to a nearby ancient temple which was really amazing with HUGE statues. Here are some photos from the week.

Dinner with the Studio

Lots of nice English everywhere

This statue was about 6 stories tall

At the temple.

Crazy traffic and millions of bikes.

Donkey pancake sandwiches, carrot meatball soup, etc.

HUGE train station

First Day at Work

(written on Tuesday, but forgot to post until just now) We all survived our first day at work, and everyone in the office was really nice. We all 4 went into different studios, myself going to studio 2. The first half of the day was mostly getting set up with the computers and equipment and the second half I started drawing some sections for a large streetscape/urban design project a bit south of Beijing. The studio took me out to lunch which was quite an experience. Up until that point, I would say that we had been eating some authentic Chinese food, but it was always things that appealed to us from the menu. This time I didn't have that liberty, so it was whatever the folks from the studio ordered. The custom here is for one person to do all the ordering for the entire table, and everyone shares in all the dishes that are spun around on a huge 'lazy susan'. The first round of food brought out consisted of nothing that looked familiar at all. The chicken feet were recognizable, but not familiar. I did end up eating one, much to my surprise, and now feel confident that I can try just about anything, even if I don't necessarily like it. At the end of the day the studio threw a little party for us out in the lobby with candy and soda. We each had to give a little talk about ourselves, and I decided to try out my Mandarin with a little "wa bu hwue shwa po tong kwa". That simply means, "I don't speak Mandarin", but they were all really impressed and it got a round of applause. Everyone here is very impressed when we are able to say anything at all in Mandarin or even that we know how to use chopsticks. That about rounded out the day other than coming home and everyone sharing their experiences for the first day of work and eating peanut butter and jelly in order to give our stomachs the comfort of digesting something familiar.

Tuesday Morning: April 7

We're about to start our first day of work in a few hours. I've been waking up at 2:30 or 3:30am every day so far and am going to try and start being productive with my extra time in the morning if I can. We unexpectedly had Monday off yesterday (we're 12 hours ahead) so we had an extra day to go around and explore the city. Here are a few of our experiences so far and a few pictures: our first taxi rides, grocery shopping (weird stuff in there), hour long back and foot massage for $12, Pizza Hut that was super classy and our most expensive meal yet (we already gave in last night), checking out the Bird's Nest and Water Cube from the Olympics, trip to Ikea for some things for our apartment (despite nearly everything in the world being made in China, we managed to buy our stuff from Sweden while we are in China), trying spicy donkey meat (good stuff), going for our first morning tea, checking out Tienemen Square, ordering our first solo meal without any language used {consisted of pointing at pictures of raw meat from a menu (we didn't order the dog, though it was on the menu) and cooking them ourselves on a little grill in the middle of our table}.

In a shopping district

DONKEY!

Cooking various raw meats and veggies

At the bird's nest. Can be seen from our apartment.

This is a test. It is only a test.

In China now.........just testing this blog thing.

p.s. This was our first breakfast.