Shanghai in September - 28 September 2014

September has flown by...

Here are a few shots of things that have happened this month.

A daily sight - Grant and Luke on their way to school or seminary.  Sometimes they take scooters, sometimes bikes.

Afternoon walk around the outside of our compound.  We love this sidewalk, covered in trees.

You can't tell from this photo, but this is Luke pushing his scooter home after the battery died.

POMEGRANATE!

Grant, Luke and I played bubble football (soccer) with some people from church.  It is more difficult than it looks!

Pedestrians can walk on this part of the sidewalk (no bikes)

Mallory matches the size perfectly.

A classic photo - a man and his dog (Grant found it in one of the boxes he helped unpacked - I think the dog ended up in the give-away pile, but he'll always have this photo).

I went on a mandatory weekend away with my department from work.  We drove a couple of hours south of Shanghai and stayed at a hotel for two nights.  We went to some sort of a park..

And we also went skiing at an indoor ski place -- it was the first time for most of the locals in my department.

At dinner at the hotel one night, they served this delicacy --- stewed frog Fallopian tubes in half a papaya.  I didn't try it.

Charity bike ride with some people from work - down one side of the river, across a ferry, and then up the other side.

It ended at a hotel on the Bund, with lunch on the terrace.

We took the kids to a display for the launch of Lincoln in China.

Luke and his friend couldn't help posing in the Oktoberfest display thing.

Afterward we went to a restaurant for ice cream -- most of us had some sort of shaved ice thing -- chocolate, fruit flavored, etc.

Luke's friend ordered a giant creation -- shaved ice in the middle, with red bean on one side and green bean on the other side.

Grant's Interim Trip - September 2014

Last week I got to go to Yunnan Province here in China for a school trip. I left on Friday and got back Thursday. We flew from Shanghai to Kunming then waited in the airport for three hours while listening to a couple people talk about physics the whole time. It was... great. Then we flew from there to the tiny mountain town of Shangri-la. It isn't the paradise that has been built up by James Hilton's Lost Horizon. It was just a way for the Chinese government to bring tourists into Yunnan Province. The town is like any average small town in the foothills of the Himalayas. That night we went to a small restaurant across the street and had some good Tibetan food.

On Saturday we went to a monastery in the morning. It was massive. We went inside and looked at the paintings and murals that were on the walls. They were pretty impressive. This monastery was a part of the "Yellow-hat sect" of Buddhism.

The Songzanlin Monastery from afar.

Afterwards we went to eat at a restaurant that served us a "hot pot". Basically, you have your own pot of  boiling water and you cook what you want. I ate a lot of yak meat and lotus roots. It was good. Then we took a walk through the remains of the old town. It was burnt down in an electrical fire a few years ago. 394 houses were destroyed. In the afternoon, we had the opportunity to help the cousin of one of our guides harvest the barley that was on his farm. We were there for about an hour and a half and we finished the whole field.

We filled up these two trailers and one more.

I got barley everywhere. It was poking me in my shoes, shirt, waistband and many other places. That night we went to a local Tibetan (they are ethnically Tibetan but they live in China, though they consider the land they live in Tibet) families house and ate their food and watched them dance. We were then told to do one of our dances so we did the Macarena. I felt kind of pathetic that this is how we showed our "culture".

The next day we got up and took an hour-long bus ride to the beginning of our trail. It wasn't really much of a trail because it was a small rocky road that led to nomad's houses. We hiked about 4 or 5 hours that day. There were many yaks along the path and I felt like I was in Switzerland because the yaks had bells on their necks and they echoed through the valleys. Horsemen came with us to guide the horses that carried our food. They were very entertaining.

Hiking on the first day.

Two random Tibetan men.

On Monday we got up to start our hike to the Abujee Lake. It took the first half of the day to get there. When we got up to it, it was a lot colder than our 3,300 meter high camp. We had climbed 750 meters in 3 hours. The air was a lot thinner, but also a lot cleaner than Shanghai. The lake was hidden behind many of the hills that led up to the Abujee mountain. It was quite the sight to behold. For lunch we had some strange chicken thing that I didn't dare eating.

Traditional "Thangka" painting.

Our guide, Sonam, with moss on his ears that only grows in areas with 0% pollution 

Me at Abujee Lake

The nasty packaged chicken leg that made me want to throw up.

After "lunch" we started heading back down to our camp for that night. It was quite the adventure. Our tough guide, Sonam, would run down the 60 degree slopes to find the trail only to sprint up it again to tell us where to go. He wouldn't even be out of breath. We descended 750 meters in 2 hours. Then walked on flat ground for another hour. It was so great to get to the campsite that day. The views we had from it were really quite impressive.

Abujee Mountain.

The Horsemen were very excited to get there.

That night we had a bonfire and listened to the local Tibetans sing their folk songs. They then listened to us sing very culturally significant songs like "Don't Stop Believing" as made famous by Journey and "I'll Make a Man Out of You" from Mulan.

The Tibetan folk song sung by one of the horsemen.

On Tuesday we had a very simple hike back to the bus. It was very relaxing and was a good way to end the hike. That afternoon, we had five hours of free time in the town and we danced with some of the local Tibetans in the main square. It was interesting.

A yak.

A (almost) Soviet flag.

The latest model of the BMW bike.

Shangri-la taxi.

The largest prayer wheel in the world (I spun it and it may or may not have been a bit sacrilegious).

Luke's Interim Trip - September 2014

For our Interim this year, around 20 students and I went to Inner Mongolia. We got to see a variety of things from deserts and grasslands to ostriches and lamaseries.  We started off our trip by having Mongolian Hot Pot which was absolutely delicious. We then got to visit a local art school and see some student sing and dance.  We then went to a lamasery (a Buddhist monastery) which was pretty cool. We also got to go to the grasslands and fly kites and make dumplings in a yurt. On one night, we woke up at 1 AM to see the stars. They were amazing. Later in the trip we got to go sand sliding in the desert. The views we saw were priceless. We also got to plant trees and visit a school to help Chinese kids learn English.

Mongolian Hotpot ^   We put noodles, lamb, bacon, ramen, chicken heart, and a few vegetables into a boiling pot of broth, and then ate it.

The Streets of Hohhot ^

Here is a kid eating yogurt at a lamasery.

We got to see some Mongolian horse racers race around a dirt track. ^

A cow randomly wandered through our Mongolian yurt motel.

Meat Sticks! ^

We watched the waiter shred a cooked lamb to pieces and then serve it to us. ^ 

A Lamasery ^

I caught this lizard in the grasslands.

The Grasslands ^

We made dumplings with a local herdsman's family. ^

Real yurts on the grasslands.

Teaching English in a Chinese Classroom ^

The locals line up sticks to stop the desert sands from shifting, allowing more plants to grow.

The Desert ^

Here's the hill where we went sandsliding. ^

Some of the camels we used for our ride through the desert.

Entrance to a lamasery Baotou.

 Local herdsman's house.