Family Reunion: Saturday

On Saturday morning, we met the very extended family in Barnett, Missouri (where my grandmother grew up) for breakfast at Gayle's Cafe. The cafe is located inside the old grain elevator, which my great grandfather helped build (at least according to the story on the menu cover):

From breakfast, we started a mixed walking/driving tour of Barnett, Versailles, Pyrmont, and the areas in between. Here are some of the sights along the way:

Across the street from the grain elevator was "the old store:"

And around the corner, was "the old hotel," where my grandma spent her first 11 years:

Here's the group en masse:

Maya met some goats in a Barnett backyard:

Here's what was referred to as "the Routen house," where my grandmother's parents lived right after they were married:

These were all in Barnett; from here we started driving down windy country roads (ok, we took some windy country roads to get to Eldon in the first place...). We saw the "Barnett Institute" (I thought everyone was kidding, but apparently they called schools fancy things back in the day):

Then the land where our ancestors first settled when they moved to the area:

We obviously didn't venture far down the lane...

We then went to the house where my great grandfather grew up:

Oops, turns out that isn't the original house. There is some speculation that this one is:

Through all the ins and outs of the car, Maya made a new friend:

We finished our driving tour and headed to the Pyrmont Church and Schoolhouse where we met up with some more family (I'd estimate about 50 people in all) for a potluck lunch. Dad found some Bubba cola:

Maya made a clover necklace and discovered basketball:

Here's Bob and Cathy (my grandma's great-niece and her husband):

(Sorry, it's a bit blurry; I'll use the excuse that I'm still getting used to the new camera...)

After the festivities in Pyrmont, we went to the RV park where many were staying for a cookout. Maya sat with grandpa:

And played with rocks and sticks:

Grandma and Milton sat and chatted:

While others relished reconnection to cell phone networks:

The Trip to Missouri

We set out on Thursday for our trip to Missouri. We stopped Thursday night in Tulsa. The car trip on Thursday was a long one for Maya, so on Friday, we stopped for a long spell in Springfield, MO. Maya got a chance to run around a local park. Here she is climbing on the playground equipment:


Let's go GG!


Taking JoAnn for a walk to see the puppy:

which was really this far away (thank goodness for telephoto lenses...):


We started driving again (just to the north side of the lake from Springfield. On the way through Lebanon, we stopped by GG's old house:

Browser Problems

I've had reports from a regular reader that the embedded slideshows from the everytrail website are crashing browsers. I don't know what the exact combination of settings is that causes this, but I'm removing the slideshows and replacing them with links to our everytrail webpages. From there, you can opt to see either the slideshows or just look at the pictures manually. This isn't as slick for those of you this worked for before, but it will work for everyone. :)

Beijing Day 6

Our last day in Beijing dawned clearer than any of the previous ones (we could actually make out the approximate location of the sun in the sky). After breakfast, we caught a cab to take us down to the Temple of Heaven. This was a very impressive set of structures a little south of the main part of Beijing. While it was a little crowded with tourists, it was one of the most impressive sights we saw. Equally impressive was the public park surrounding the temple--it was crowded to bursting with Beijing residents enjoying the beautiful Saturday. After the Temple of Heaven, we took the subway up to see the Lama temple. Perhaps just as impressive (and just as crowded), this is a more tightly packed cluster of buildings that started its life as an imperial residence (note the yellow tiles on the roofs), but evolved into a temple complex. This is also where we saw the most serious (and interesting) religious displays by the populace while in Beijing. After touring this complex, we walked north several blocks to the (deserted) Temple of the Earth. Diametrically opposed to the Temple of Heaven along the axis of the city, this area and the park surrounding it were practically a ghost town compared to the Temple of Heaven. The structures were not as impressive, but it was interesting (and expansive!) in its own right. From the Temple of the Earth, we caught a subway back towards the center of town. We found a FANTASTIC lunch at a muslim restaurant in a little hutong. We were running low on cash, though, so we ate on a dime... the best lunch we had by far, for two, under $8 total. Yum in many ways.

After lunch, we walked back in to the center of Beijing. We climbed Coal Hill to get a very nice view of the Forbidden city. Down the other side, we entered Beihai park for the second time. We just sat beside the lake for a while, then we climbed up to the white pagoda for some more views, gardens, and structures. After Beihai park, we walked along the lake, then down across the Forbidden City to a restaurant specializing in dumplings. They had dumplings of all varieties (pork, chicken, donkey...). These were among the most scrumptious of foods we ate. From the restaurant, we wandered through the Wangfujing Daijie food street market. Some interesting looking things there, for sure. Then home again to pack and get ready for the flight home the next day.

Beijing Day 6

Beijing Day 5

Friday was the day of the actual reason for the trip to Beijing. While I attended my workshop during the morning and early afternoon, Tim went out to Fragrant Hills Park, a common destination for Beijingers looking to escape the city. Not only is it a pretty nice park, but it contains some nice gardens and buildings as well. It's pretty hilly (think Ozark mountains for you Missourians), and so Tim's trip included a ski lift venture just to speed up some of the climbing progress. There was the potential for some nice views from out there, too, but it was a pretty bad day on the air quality scale. But you can pretend that's mist in the photos.

After Tim returned and my workshop concluded, we tried to figure out how to spend the late afternoon and evening. I discovered that the Beijing zoo was only a two mile walk (OK, it turned into 3+...) from our hotel. So we headed out down the busy street. We arrived at the zoo about an hour and a half before closing. Plenty of time to see the pandas. Now, our guidebooks had warned us that the panda exhibit was worth the trip but not to expect the zoo to be up to western standards. How unnecessary the warning was! The zoo was WONDERFUL! We hurried to the panda exhibit to make sure we had enough time to see them. We wandered through there; they had a whole piece of the exhibit with 8 cubs under 2 years old on display. They were so cute. Tim took at least a hundred pictures of just pandas. (OK, I exaggerate. But I just counted, and the number is 71.) But we were left with enough time to wander around the rest of the zoo, too. We didn't see a lot because it was pretty spread out and the areas for different animals ("pens" sounds so barbaric) were large. In our opinion, the zoo was in fact up to western standards.

For dinner, we continued down the street to the old soviet-style Beijing exhibition center. It was cool in and of itself, but it also contained a lovely Russian restaurant. OK, so the food wasn't great, but the ambiance was excellent. OF course, we caught a cab back to the hotel...

Beijing Day 5

Beijing Day 4

Tim had apparently had enough photography on Wednesday, so I got to take the pictures on Thursday. We joined an organized tour to the Great Wall at Badaling and the Ming Tombs with some others from the conference. We had a crazy tour guide ("call me Joe"), so we got the tour largely in English, which was nice. Who knows how many of the tales he told us were true (ask us about why the emperor wore a jade belt at night), but it was surely entertaining. We started out to Badaling. There was a terrible traffic jam on the highway, but our bus driver knew a "back way" so were weren't that delayed. At Badaling, we wandered through "Bear park" full of some sun bears (though it was kinda sad since it wasn't clear they had drinking water) to the "pulley car" which transported us up the mountain to the wall. Unnecessary, perhaps, but fun. The wall here was (according to Tim) visually more impressive than his visit the previous day, especially in the way it snaked into the distance. This is also probably why this place was PACKED with tourists. We walked along the wall for an hour or so, then caught the pulley car back down to the bus.

Back on the bus, we headed to the Friendship Store (a government run store that used to be the only shopping game in town for expats; supposedly, in the 70s and 80s, the store even only accepted foreign money). Now it's basically a tourist trap, though a good one at that. Souvenirs may be overpriced here, but it was an easy place to pick up some traditional Chinese gifts. There was also a cloisonne factory within the store that we got to tour. That was very neat. Upstairs was a restaurant for lunch; probably the most unauthentic food we had (they even served french fries!) but it was good.

From lunch, we headed to the Ming tombs. Conceptually, this is an impressive place. the grounds contain the tombs of 13 of the Ming emperors, though only one of the tombs has been opened. Joe led us around the most famous of the tombs (though it hasn't been opened yet), but we missed both the tomb that is open and the famous avenue of stone figures. Alas, something for next time.

We arrived back at the hotel earlier than we expected, so we changed into clean shirts and got a taxi downtown. We hit the main shopping district in central Beijing (Wangfujing Dajie), grabbed some more souvenirs, sampled some tea, bought a lot, and then had the famous roast duck at Quanjude. Yum. I regret (ok, I don't) to say that I didn't sample the duck brain. But I did try the soup they made out of the remnants of our duck...

Beijing Day 4

Beijing Day 3

On Wednesday, I spent the entire day at my conference. Tim took advantage of my engagement and spent the brunt of the day hiking a segment of the Great Wall. He hired a car for the day (for the equivalent of around $115) to drive him to the Great Wall at Jinshanling (about 110km from Beijing). He started hiking here and hiked about 10km along the wall to Simatai, where the driver picked him back up. Even though the hike was a decently short distance, it took several hours since that area of the wall is not in the greatest condition. However, it is also not packed with tourists--just a handful of others on the same hike. Oh, and Mongolian farmers trying to sell the tourists stuff. Tim said the sales pitch was almost always the same, with the same English phrases. After saying no to several, a woman asked Tim if he wanted a postcard. He said "no" again. She said "Maybe later?" He said "OK, fine. Sure. Later." So she followed him. He didn't realize that she planned to follow him until "later" arrived. She was apparently fairly companionable... her English was good enough to give him some tidbits about different sections of the wall, etc. Tim was apparently moving at a pretty good clip, though, and it was tiring her out to keep up with him. At one point, she says: "that's 113 steps up there. Want to see a shortcut?" Tim declined, and she sighed, and started up the steps with him. He passed her by about midway saying "meet you at the top," to her "wow, American tall, American strong..." At the top, he allowed her to pitch her goods once more, then just offered her 50 RMB for walking with him (he didn't really want any of the stuff). She apparently said: "but I'm tired. How about 70?"

Through all of this, Tim managed to get some great shots. Here's another map with attached photos from his journey.

Beijing Day 3

After my conference and Tim's hike, he got cleaned up, and then we attended the conference banquet. It was an Imperial style meal. The strangest two things on offer (though none of it was completely normal...) were duck tongue (really, it actually TASTES like duck, but it has the consistency, of, well, what you would expect of tongue. weird) and sea cucumber (blech).

Beijing Day 2

On our second day, my conference started in the afternoon. We took advantage of the free morning and went out to the Summer Palace. This is the new version of the Summer Palace; we didn't have time to visit the ruins of the old version. But this was beautiful and impressive. Tuesday was the second clearest day we had in China, so that made the trip even more pleasant. The Summer Palace was created by the Empress Cixi as her main home. The Palace buildings revolve around a lake northwest of the city. A very long corridor abuts the lake, and a serious complex of buildings climb the hills away from the lake. We explored the buildings up the hill, crested the hill, and ended on the other side in a public park around the palace. In a manner reminiscent of the Riverwalk in San Antonio, the Chinese have built a replica of an antique Chinese street along a river behind the palace. It was a bit touristy but pretty cute. After wandering that, we clamored back over the hill, and caught a boat across the lake. The boat left from a dock next to Empress Cixi's Marble Boat. We finished with a walk along the lake and a taxi back to the hotel. We had a bit of trouble catching a taxi; it cost us 25 RMB to taxi from the hotel to the palace, and taxi drivers wanted us to pay a fixed price of 100 RMB back. We finally found a driver willing to use his meter; the ride ended up costing only 20 RMB. Here are the map and photos of our Tuesday morning trip.

Beijing Day 2

While I was at the conference on Tuesday afternoon, Tim took a walk in the Beijing suburb around our hotel. Here's the map of his walk (nothing really picture-worthy, which is surprising for Tim, who took 1500 photos while we were away...):
Beijing Day 2: Afternoon at EveryTrailMap created by EveryTrail:GPS Geotagging

Beijing Day 1

We arrived in Beijing on Sunday afternoon around 2:30. The flight out was HORRIBLE. The airline food was terrible and either that or a small stomach bug Maya had before we left introduced me to the air sickness bags. Yuck. So we spent Sunday evening recovering; once we checked into our room, we didn't leave until Monday morning.

We woke up early (thanks jet lag!) and grabbed breakfast in the hotel. They had traditional American fare as well as more adventurous Chinese selections. We stuck with the traditional fare for the first day. After gaining our stomachs, we headed down to the lobby to grab a taxi. The hotel staff (which was excellent) communicated our destination (the nearest subway station) to our driver, and we were off. We hadn't considered that it was rush hour, and we experienced literally packing into a subway train. We took the subway down to the city center, exited at the Tian'anmen Square station, and oriented ourselves. Throughout our trip, we used a GPS to track our movements, so you can follow our path below. We first saw the "Egg," Beijing's new theater complex. Then we headed into the Forbidden City. Outside, we met up with some Chinese tourists who thought we were so anomalous they wanted their picture taken with me (I'm a celebrity!). In truth, though we got some stares from time to time, the Chinese were very welcoming and lovely. We spent the morning wandering the Forbidden City, the huge imperial palace complex that centers downtown Beijing. There were impressive buildings, views, and artifacts within.

After finishing the Forbidden City (which I assume one "finishes" seeing in the way one finishes seeing the Louvre), we walked north to Qianhai lake. Our walk took us through a traditional Beijing hutong; a series of alleyways that many Beijing residents live in. This does highlight the changing Beijing landscape; many of these hutong are being reclaimed for massive luxury condominiums. Feelings are mixed on this; many are apparently disappointed to lose such a tradition, but others strongly believe this is greatly improving Beijing as a city. We had a lovely lunch at a Hunan restaurant on Qianhai lake. Then we followed a suggested walking tour around the lake and up to Beijing's Drum Tower and Bell Tower. We both climbed the Drum tower and witnessed a display of drum beating. Tim then climbed the Bell tower for a slightly different view.

From here, we headed back south to Beihai park. We intended to see the entire park that afternoon, but there were so many buildings and gardens, we got through only half of it before closing time. From the park, we wandered back across the city center to Tian'anmen Square, where we sat and watched for a while. Police (apparently unarmed) were everywhere. Plum tired, we caught a cab back to our hotel, where we had a lovely dinner in one of the hotel's 20 restaurants.

You'll notice quite a haze in these and many pictures. This was one major downside of the trip--the air quality in Beijing is as bad as advertised. While we didn't have that much trouble breathing, by the end of the day, we could tell that we'd been breathing bad air...

Beijing Day 1

At the Children's Museum and Georgetown

Tim and I both had the day off last Tuesday, so we kept Maya home from day care and all took a trek downtown to the Austin Children's Museum and lunch on 2nd Street.




After that, we headed up to Georgetown for dinner with the family. Maya locked herself in Ginger's crate while we waited:

Ginger broke her out:

Then the two played:

Which was obviously HILARIOUS:

More swinging

Grandma (GG) moved to town...

They just keep coming. My grandma moved to town last week. She's now ensconced (and largely unpacked) in a new place in Sun City where everyone else is. Here's grandma after the big drive:

And Maya welcoming her:

And my parents super cute puppy:

Maya also felt the need to help Ginger empty her toy basket. (It's ok; Ginger helps Maya with her toys sometimes, too...)

Just Cute

Maya's New Table

Maya's lately taken with tables and chairs. So we bought her a set from IKEA. They're closer to the ground and less damaging if she falls. And while we were shopping, she fell in love with this bead roller coaster. So we got it too. Isn't she spoiled?