Everyday in China...

No matter where we were and no matter what we had to eat, we were always given watermelon at the end of our meal. Breakfast, lunch and dinner...watermelon. It was summer and the season for the fruit which originates from Egypt. Of course there was rice too, and plenty of it. We learned to appreciate rice at some of the meals where what we ate was undefinable. The fried rice in Beijing was the very best because it was fried in duck fat!

My report on China cannot be complete without a story from the bathroom. The toilets above were sometimes our only option in a public bathroom. Our hotels all had Western toilets. In public, if there were 5 stalls available, only 1 would be the kind of toilet we were familiar with. And at a few locations the toilet above was our only option! The first time the girls encountered this was at the Great Wall. Bob and I were sitting inside a restaurant and the girls got up to use the bathroom. They were guided to a building outside of the restaurant and this should have been our first clue that things were not normal. They were gone at least 15 minutes! When they finally came back to the table, they stood by the table and said nothing. They just giggled. Here is what they said.

Maria: You need to see this.

Jennifer: There is no toilet paper.

Leah: And no toilets!

Mom: What?

Maria: You just have to come with us.

Jennifer: And bring some toilet paper.

Leah: And the camera.

We did our best to figure out the process but really had no idea how to proceed. Later in the vacation we were blessed with a tutorial on proper toilet use by a woman who neglected to close her stall door. We got a full view of how to use the Chinese toilets!

Check out the sign on this building. They advertised Western style facilities!

Li River

The Li River in Guilin was beautiful! We saw the most amazing scenery that reminded us of the Chinese paintings we had seen at the Buddhist temple a few days before. Bob took hundreds of pictures all showing these mountains that looked like they bubbled up out of the ground. On some turns of the boat, we were very close to the faces of the hills and were told to find the shapes of animals made in the stone formations.

The next five posts are all about the things we saw in and out of the boat on our tour.

The scenery may have been pretty but our mode of transportation was less than glamorous. There seemed to be two different kinds of boats; one for tourists and one for Chinese. On the back of every boat was a kitchen. This intrigued us almost more than the scenery!

We boarded our boat right behind these two. There were probably 10 boats in all.

Right away we were asked if we wanted the lunch that came with the ride or if we wanted additional food (fish). We declined the fish and decided to take whatever else they were serving. (Our kids are troupers. They ate whatever was put in front of them.)

The little boats below delivered fish to the back of the larger boats.

Look closely at the white bucket on the back of the boat. Can you see the fins of the fish sticking out?And here it is ready to cook!Can you tell we enjoyed the cooking show? There is more...

Once our ride got started, so did the cooking! Every boat had a kitchen and a large crew to prepare lunch. They all had their own techniques and menu. I have no idea what was going on at the back of our own boat, but I am sure it looked something like this.

We saw more than just the hills of Guilin on our cruise.

Water buffalo that looked more like cows to us.

We wanted that hat!

These are cormorant fishing birds. They are trained to fish at night capturing their prey while one foot is chained to the boat. Their necks are banded so they can't swallow the fish.

Our boat was headed right for this guy. We were standing at the front of the boat and got very nervous as we approached him. We were really close!Apparently this is common and the rafter intended to connect his craft to ours! He tied right onto our boat and started getting out his jade and junk to sell.This happened two more times during the trip.In case you are wondering...We did buy something from the peddlers! The girls negotiated quite a deal from the vendors.

And after they were done, they just cast themselves off and headed for the next boat.

At the end of the cruise we approached this small town who mostly makes its living off of the tourists who dock there at the end of their ride. Like the rest of the area, the scenery was beautiful.

But of course we had to take the mandatory walk through the shopping area selling EVERYTHING! Our guide helped us navigate and shook his head "no" if we were heading into a rip off. It is funny how every single item for sale was 110 Chinese Yen. We got every seller down to around 30 Yen.

And we got those clever hats we had scene the locals wearing!

Traveling to Guilin

From Xi'an we flew to Guilin to take a cruise on the Li River. This part of the country is beautiful and reminded us more of the China we saw in pictures. Our drive from the airport led us past rice paddies. There were people in the fields planting and harvesting rice. You can see a man in this picture working in the field.
We had lots of time that day to explore the busy city of Guilin. Our hotel was a 5 star that looked more like a 3 star so getting out and exploring was a good idea. It was hot...about 95...but we pushed on. Ducking in and out of many many stores, we shopped for everything imaginable. The girls bought head phones in the shape of fruit and watermelon fruit drinks. (more later about the watermelon) Most of this area catered to tourists in town for the cruise and beautiful country. We were hungry and Bob was in search of something authentic. No KFC or McDonald's for us. We had avoided the fast food so far and that was not going to be any different. We stumbled upon the place below.

Absolutely NO ONE spoke a word of English. Nothing. They motioned to us to pick out our fish from the live tanks and we assumed that would be our dinner. We chose scallops and shrimp to be safe. After a lot of hand motions and pantomime, we were taken to a private dining room with glass doors on one side and its own bathroom. (more on bathrooms later) It gave us a little uneasy feeling to see waiters and waitresses peak around the corner to get a glimpse of us. We were obviously not in a tourist restaurant. All of a sudden our waitress (below) brought in the waiter (below). He actually spoke a little English and said we should also order some rice and boiled weeds. We ended up having a wonderful time with these two cute Chinese people. They kept the food and cold drinks coming as their coworkers peaked in to see the Westerners with blond hair eating Chinese food. It ended up being another great meal with the tastiest shrimp ever! As we were leaving the waiter asked us why we didn't just go to the KFC down the street. We said we would rather eat the food of his country which prompted smiles all around and the need for a picture to remember this special day.
We walked back to our hotel across the Li River from the pretty town of Guilin.

Dumplings in Xi'an

The city of Xi'an with its Terracotta Warriors and Buddhist temple was my favorite stop in China. We spent that part of our trip in awe of the ancient buried treasure of the warriors. The fact that our guide was so good really helped make Xi'an a town I would return to. Our final outing was for dumplings, the famous food of the region.

Our guide, Olivia, took us to a dumpling banquet right in the center of the city. In English I think the restaurant is called the Golden Dumpling.

We were given serving after serving of these yummy dumplings. Can you tell that the ones in the center are shaped like chickens?
Since there were 5 of us, we received 5 of every variety of dumpling. Those ones in the cupcake wrappers were cold walnut dumplings and tasted like dirt. Bob ate them all. He must like Chinese dirt.
The purple dumplings were grape and the pinkish ones in the middle were filled with shrimp. In the picture and the one below this one you can see the other items we had for our banquet. The green stuff was a plate of boiled weeds; really awful stuff.

At the end of our meal, we were brought this boiling pot. While we finished eating our dumplings the pot boiled away. Then this cute girl came and told us an ancient legend about the soup. As she talked she added ingredients to the pot. At the end of the story she added tiny dumplings. This ended up being a delicious chicken soup. As she ladled it out to us she said the person who received the most dumplings would have good luck in the days to come. Bob won of course...probably because he was willing to eat the walnut dirt and the boiled weeds!
This was an excellent meal. We are still talking about the wonders of Xi'an and that wonderful food.

Time to catch up!

We have been back in Belgium for a week but I just haven't had time to update the blog. Since I last wrote, we have taken Maria to college, celebrated my birthday and got the twins started in 7th grade-Middle School!

Maria's start to college has gone very well. She has a wonderful roommate (a friend from Belgium) and the coolest Euro style room. Once settled at Purdue, she met a few old friends from her Indiana high school days and many new friends from all over the US. She started classes on Monday and feels really settled. She celebrated her 19th birthday without us, which was sad for me, but she had a fabulous day. Thanks to all our friends who texted, sent her cards, called and sent fun little gifts. Her day was full of fun and ended with a party of 10 for dinner at 9 Irish Brothers, a famous go to place at Purdue. How did she already find 10 kids to celebrate with?

Leah and Jenn are in Middle School and for the first time ever they have different teachers and different schedules. They are ready! I think they miss Maria and talk to her on Facebook, mostly for clothing and hair advice. 7th grade should be a fun year.

If my friends and family don't mind reading more about China, I will spend the next 2 days finishing up my report on our wonderful trip...

I have so many more things to post about our trip to china but I have to put my postings on hold for a while. We are back in the USA getting Maria set up and ready for school. I can't believe she is preparing to be a Freshman in college! We have plenty to do but the best part of this visit is just being back home again in my Indiana home.

Things to do in the US:
1. Buy dorm room stuff for Maria. I have collected every bonus offer from Bed Bath and Beyond plus every Macy's, Kohl's and Best Buy coupon. We are ready to shop!
2. Pull weeds. OH MY GOSH!! My yard has never looked this bad. Would one of you wonderful readers from my hometown please give me a heads up next time? The outside of the house looks like it could belong to the Adams Family or the Munsters. (In all fairness to my wonderful friend, Jennifer, the inside looks great.)
3. Let the twins go...everywhere. Their days will be full. They hit North America on Friday with a list of activities and they are already on their way to fun. In a few days they are headed off to Chattaeu Nana and Papa for swimming, golf and slushy drinks. Being almost 13 is wonderful.
4. Convince Bob to remodel the kitchen. We are already half way there but now the fun part and $$$ spending can begin. It is hard to throw money into a kitchen we rarely use.
5. Eat out! Yeah! Restaurants in the US sell the best salads. Very creative. I plan to try all of them.

The hardest part about this trip will be leaving Maria behind. She is grown up and ready to go off on her own. I am not ready for her to be an ocean away. My wonderful Flemish neighbor told me last week that if you raise a child for 18 years and they are not ready to leave, then you have done something wrong. We must have succeeded in the child rearing because she is definitely ready. I have absolutely no worries about her being able to take care of herself. If I had to think of one word to describe Maria, it would be STRONG. Strong willed. Strong in belief. Strong in devotion. Strong in confidence. She will succeed in college without us holding her hand along the way. We will be there on Skype, texting and phone but I still wish I could see her more often.

Terracotta Factory

After seeing all the real Terracotta Warriors, we went to the terracotta factory to see how they were made and watch people craft all kinds of Chinese items like musical instruments, silk rugs, furniture, pottery and warriors.
We got to make our own tiny warriors.

Maria's was the best.
We were so impressed with this factory. It wasn't a tourist trap at all. We bought 2 of our own warriors to bring back home and guard our house. We can't match Emperor Qin's collection but they are really cool.