Oct. 1 Leaving for China

With such a short turn around time, I had a hard time getting packed for this trip. I am sure that there are things that I have forgotten. But I have my passport, ticket and credit cards so will be OK.

The first news is that Calder broke his arm on Sunday. Not bad - just a hair line fracture, but he now has a cast.

The bad news is that he won't be able to play soccer and his dad is coach of the team. We are trying to convince him that being an assistant will be OK - I don't think that is going to fly.

The plan was that I was going to take Branwen to Japanese school while Jef and Calder went to the doctor. Change of plan - no Japanese today. Instead Branwen had to come to my pool aerobics with me. She was so excited about going swimming, she changed into her suit while I was on the phone telling everyone about the change in plans.



Calder is both sad and a little embarrassed about the cast. By the time he got it on the arm wasn't really hurting. He alternated between waving the cast at people so that they would notice and hiding behind his back when they asked about it. He protested going back to school, so Alec said he would pick him up. The boys went out for ice cream as a special treat. It was supposed to be a secret, but 4 3/4 year olds blab.

He got to choose the restaurant for dinner, also. He chose Islands, which is a hamburger place that we walked to from his house. Chuck and I didn't mind because we knew it would be long time until we ate a good burger again. (When I came back from India, I was starving for a burger. I had to have several before the need was satisfied.)

After dinner we finished packing and Alec took us to the airport for our 1:40 am flight. I was falling asleep before we boarded and managed to sleep quite a bit on the plane. It had more leg room than Air France (which isn't saying much. But the guy in the window seat managed to get out without the other 2 getting up. We did get up most of the time.)

Yuan, Chuck's colleague at UCLA, was on the same flight, so he had our taxi follow his. That way we would get to the guest house of Tsinghua University with out problems.

Our room is a normal small hotel room with twin beds. The lack of space may be a problem since we will be in it for a month, but we are planning to manage. Chuck will be working and I will be exploring, so we won't be in it much. It does have a big flat screen TV with a zillion channels.

After unpacking and finding hidey holes for all of our stuff, we ate breakfast and walked around the campus.

The campus is lovely. There is a small stream running through it. This is a vacation week so the students are off and high school students are touring the campus. They looked just like the groups at UCLA - proud parents taking pictures of everything and the kids trying to look cool. Many of them wanted their pictures taken with us.

Went back to the room for a nap and then walked to the Metro station area. This may be another problem - it is a 30 minute walk. Stopped for coffee and met a junior from UCLA. She is at Peking University for her junior year abroad.

Yuan had arranged for a group dinner at the local branch of the famous duck restaurant. (I had mentioned that the last time I was in Beijing, we had been to every other kind of Chinese restaurant but had missed that one.

His mother and fiancee were there:

and Xiaobin and Xianglei:
At the duck restaurant you can't just have duck!

We had chicken feet with wasabi dipping sauce. (Actually the best chicken feet I've had.)

Pickled cucumbers
Mushrooms


Salad
Pears poached in wine
The duck. We now have a post card with our duck's number - just like the Tour d'Argent in Paris.

Beef with asparagus
And ending up with mushroom noodle soup.

The X's walked us home - except that they didn't know the way either. It took about an hour, but we now know a good route.

I had to put an extra cover on the bed to soften it. The Chinese REALLY like hard beds. We did sleep very very well.