Beijing

Hello students, family, and friends! This is actually Apryl (Mrs. Swyn) writing for Greg. He is experiencing the communist government first hand....they have his blog blocked! He wants to apologize for the lack of posts, but his hotel has had terrible wireless internet access. Olivia and I have only talked to him once and gotten one e-mail, which I will include excerpts of. He hopes his next hotel provides him the opportunity to send more e-mails (so I can post them on this blog) and send pictures, which he says he would love to share with everyone!

So, a summary of Beijing...

Day One (6/17/2009): Tiananmen Square at night and during the daytime, the Forbidden City, the Temple of Heaven, and a traditional Peking Roast Duck dinner. For those of you who know Greg well, and know that he is NOT a morning person, this will confirm how much he is suffering from jet lag. "I was wiped but had jet lag so bad, my roomate and I got up at 4:00 am and went to the flag raising at Tiannamen Sq." Note: 4 am!! As his wife, I am shocked!!! Aside from that, I don't know about his experiences at any of these places. He'll have to fill all you loyal readers in when he returns.

Day Two (6/18/2009): The Great Wall was "so amazing but so disappointing....It was rainy and foggy we could only see about 50 yards." He also went to a Cloisonne Factory, which he said was incredible. They were making beautiful statues out of the cloisonne. He would have loved to purchase one, but wasn't sure how to get it back here safely. They were also told they could find them cheaper in other places. He also went to the Ming Tombs and an Acrobatic Show. I can't wait to hear details about the Acrobatic Show!! His day ended with a visit to a night market. "I was at the night market in Beijing. Can you say total Andrew Zimmern from the Travel Channel? There were fried scorpions, fried starfish, fried silkworms, you name it...I think I smelled stinky tofu as well. Absolutely rank!"

Day Three (6/19/2009): Free Study Day. He went with a guy in his tour group who speaks fluent Chinese. I believe he is a professor of Chinese in Minnesota.
"So yesterday was amazing. It was our first free study day. I went to Mao's tomb (twice, long story) and got to see the embalmbed Mao Tse Tong followed by the Mao museum. Pretty cool. From there, I went to the Lama Temple, the largest Tibetan Buddhist monestary outside of Tibet. So cool....you'd love it. Huge pagoda type structures, monks burning inscence, and the largest carved wooden Buddha in the world (about 40 feet tall, I thing). The whole place had such a peaceful atmosphere. Lunch on our own was interesting...Got to order something that I had no idea what it was. We manged to luck out, however and got some really good Chinese food which was a bit different than China Buffet. I ordered a beef stew, someone else in my group had this chicken dish that was CRAZY spicy, and someone else got this egg and chicken thing. It's served family style so when it was all said and done, we had WAY too much food. The waitresses must have thought we were idiots...

From there, we hit the Confucian Temple where Chinese scholars have taken Confucian governmental entrance exams since about 1300. Unreal...such an amazing setting. It oozed history and had such a great vibe. You have to see my pictures.

The highlight of the day came on a whim and I wound up getting Olivia the coolest gift ever. I'll try to make this brief and I could describe the situation better over Skype but I'll try...For most of the day, I was with Richard Borer, the chinese language prof. (brilliant guy) On our way out of the temple, this old chinese guy approaches him and they start talking. He has some caligraphy that he wants to sell us...I'm thinking great, more street vendor crap. Richard then tells us that this guy is a teacher and he wants us to follow him to his house. Again, I'm REALLY skeptical...but our group follows him. His place is this little dive of an apartment if you can call it that. It was all of 10 x 10 feet with a little desk and a bed. To make a long story short, turns out this guy was a professor of caligraphy at Beijing University. I have him write Olivia's name and he makes this beautiful poster. What's cool is that I have the whole process videotaped with him explaining what everything means. Unreal experience!"

Those are the adventures thus far for Mr. Swyn. Stay tuned, and hopefully we'll get to hear more frequently about his travels around China!