China - Day 11

It's the end of day 11 in Beijing. Actually, it is the beginning of day 12 technically, but that is of little consequence. Our day started with a skype call we made to Jonathan. Jonathan got a new laptop recently, and so we can video talk with him. My dad called Jonathan and Noel answered. Jonathan and Noel are in CA for a few days. So, my parents and siblings got to talk with the whole Zimmerman clan today over skype. That was really neat.

Today I went over to a school called the Apple Tree to see what was going on over there. I went with a friend here, also from CA, who teaches English to the young kids. It is really just a time to act for the kids and sing a little song. That was fun. The youngest group that Nicco teaches is really funny. I don't really know what it is, maybe that fact that Nicco is a foreigner, or maybe that he does not speak Chinese, but there are three kids in that class that just cannot stand the sight of him. There is one girl there, and then there are twins, one boy and one girl. Then twins operate like a pair, whatever one does, the other will do as well. Nicco has told us stories about how these three kids will just start crying at the sight of him, but that seemed pretty hard to believe.

The doors to each room have little port holes in them. So, Nicco looks in the room, and there are his nemesis as he will call them. Well, he has to teach the class, so he opens the door and steps in, and he doesn't even take two steps in the room before the little girl just breaks down into tears. Within a few seconds, the girl twin realizes that Nicco is in the room, and she cuts lose. Of course, the other twin must join in on the cacophony of noise, so just for the fun of it, he starts crying to. It was the funniest thing to see. Just the fact that Nicco doesn't even say anything to make these kids cry. It's just the sight of him that makes them cry, and well, that is just really funny.

That ended about 1:00 O'clock. I don't really know what the rest of my family was doing, probably doing some school or something. When Nicco and I came back we went straight to a local restaurant to meet up with my family, the Huangs, and one other family. We live in a gated community (we've noticed that just about everything is gated and fenced in China), and the restaurant is in that community. We had lunch and then just hung out for awhile. Danny went to play with some of the kids. Katherine went to read and then to bed (her stomach did not feel good this morning, and is still hurting a bit). I just walked around in the compound. It really is a pretty place just to walk around. The sun was shining, although it was a bit cold, so it was great just to walk around. You may think that I have gotten enough walking lately, and in truth, I have, but oh well, there wasn't much else to do.

After dinner, we headed out into Beijing to go see the lights of the town. You may wonder what is so special about the lights in Beijing, as did I. Well, in downtown Beijing, some of the building are outlined in lights, others just have some cool lighting, so, that is what we went to see. In reality, the lighting was around and in Tiananmen Square. There were about five displays inside the square that had to do with the Olympics. It was really cool to see. It is not possible to separate that from the history of the square though. It looks so beautiful now, but the massacre that went on just can't be separated from that place. One of the the people we know here was at Tianamen when the massacre took place, and we have here a little second hand about some of the things that went on that day, and it is so sobering to here.

That is simply of the things that cannot be erased. Tonight though, the square did look wonderful. There is a little story about how we got into the square. The whole square is blocked off with a chest high fence, and there are gates which you have to go through in order to get into the square. I don't know if this was set up for the Olympics or what, but it is there. So, we get to the square at about 9:30pm. The place is all lit up and there are a lot of people inside the square walking around. We go to one of the openings and we walk in. There are police at every opening, at least two of them. So, I go in a little bit and then the police tell me to go back out, along with everyone else. We ask them why we can not go in, and he says it is because they are going to close the square down. Now, this whole exchange was in Chinese, so the guards did not really know we were tourists. Anyway, so, believing that we could not get into the actual square, we walked along on the outside of the fence. It is a long fence to walk around. We came to another opening with police to see if we could get in there, because during our walk we saw people coming up from the under the street walkway into the square. The guard said try the next gate. So, we get to that gate and finally use English to talk to the guard to see if we could get in. He looked at our group and kinda counted us, and then opened the gate for us to go in. He started to close it before my mom got in, I guess he though she was not a part of our group, but we got her in.

It turned out perfect it seems. We had just finished looking at the last display when the lights started to go off. So, it was cool. Tomorrow I think we will be going to a museum where they will have the national treasure of China on display. The real pieces, not just replicas like they normally do, so that might be interesting. We are also going to pick up Katherine's cloak that she had ordered a little bit ago. It turns out that this tailor also does men's suits, so I think I'm going to end up getting one...
-Aaron

Our group, minus me, inside the square.

From Beijing Day 11

A bridge. I don't know what bridge it is, but it was pretty cool.

From Beijing Day 11

Beijing Friendlies. I didn't even know that the Olympics had mascots until I got to China... I guess the US didn't like them.

From Beijing Day 11

Nor did I know that the theme of the Olympics was "One world one dream" Of course, I probably just did not notice, and everyone else knew it already.

From Beijing Day 11

From Beijing Day 11

There are a few more on the album, just click the link at the bottom of any of the photos.