The Garrison Blend: 2010

I know I know I am behind. But I promise lots of picture postings. September was a month of joining in groups and getting our shipments and seeing the sites.

The kids had been in school for a little over a week when September started, and Syd decided she wanted to get involved in the sports at her school. She mainly started out wanting to do volleyball, but found out they needed more girls for the soccer team, so joined that first, since volleyball didn't start until November. She really impressed her coach on her speed and not being afraid to be aggressive. The boys also wanted to play soccer, so we joined them up for the Beijing Sports program, which the soccer is similar to the little programs you would get in Utah. Stockton got to be on the same team as his new friend Kia in our branch and Nic was excited to be on the blue team again like he was in Utah. Stockton also was able to sign up for Cub Scouts in Beijing, they really have a nice size group here I believe there is at least 85 boys in the Cub Scout program. It is different doing it through a group other than the church, since outside the church Cub Scouts actually starts at age 6 with Tiger Scouts and the boys go through by grade not age, so Stockton has to both is Wolf & Bear books in one year. His first activity was a Great Wall hike, which was a lot of fun and he earned a cool badge for his vest and his hiking belt loop.

During September I had a lot of time on my hands with Jon working and kids in school, so I decided to go to a kick boxing class with another lady in our branch, and to my surprise I really enjoyed it. This came in very handy since there were still lots of days I was ready to come home and not come back. Food was still a big challenge both in trying to cook and eating out. I am pretty sure food is always going to be the challenge here, either I will get very sick of the few places I like to eat or just plane sick of the food all together.

Jon is really good about trying to get us out on weekend site seeing, which helps me get through the week. So one of the first weekends we went to a Hutong down in a part of Beijing known as "Old Beijing" and it is also were the Confucius Temple is. It is also the area that they built the first higher education buildings. It was really neat to see some of the original tablets they wrote on and the beautiful campus that the education buildings were built on. We were definitely in a local part of Beijing, the restaurant we ate in had 7 tables and local dishes. We have discovered that our safe go to dish is Guang Po Chicken, any thing else even if it seems like you know what it is, is a crap shoot when you this local. There were two no smoking signs in this little restaurant, and our table and one other were the only ones not smoking. We also had the delight of being watched the whole time we ate. To top off the experiance, Jon took Nic to a public bathroom so while he was gone it was just Sydney, Stockton and myself, and the table right behind Syd was ordering their food and the must have needed to approve one dish, because next thing we knew the cook was bring out a large live fish in a net for the people to look at. It was funny to see Syd and myself jump when the fish kept moving its head and tail. The cool side to being down in a local old hutong is to get to see how people truely live in the city. We shopped and the kids got to see the local people playing Chinese chess and to see that they keep wild birds(like a black bird) as pets with a collar and leash on its neck.

On the weekend of September 18th the two branches do a special trip to an awesome location of the Great Wall. You head up on Saturday and you can hike and have free time, then they have a big group dinner and a fun talent show that ends in fireworks and dancing. Young Women and Young Men leaders take the group of kids who want to go sleep on the actual Great Wall for the night. So Syd was so excited and loved the experiance of knowing very few people in can say that they got to sleep on the Great Wall of China. The rest of us stayed in very rustic cabin type rooms, but the view from our window and area was amazing, the Great Wall was just about 150 yards from these cabins. Then on Sunday morning we had a group breakfast and did a sacrament meeting at our cabin's gathering area. The spirit there was so awesome. I do need to back track a little to say that the drive up to this part of the wall was crazy. Once you left the main road, you were basically on a one car road through a little old mountain village, and for us it was early evening. We were following a large passenger bus on this road that allows traffic in both directions, and this bus was going at least 20 miles per hour over the posted speed and kept passing cars on "s" curve roads. There were a few times we saw the bus turning on the wheels on one side only, not to mention the two times it almost hit a sheep herder and a group of people. All I can say is driving in China is never ever dull.

We also took one weekend back into Beijing and went to Ri Tan Park, which is the Temple of the Sun for the old emperors. It is one of the smaller temple areas and more of a large park area. It also has a great restaurant that I love, it was the first Chinese restaurant that Jon and I ate at back in May on my first trip over. If I could eat here every day I would be very very happy.

September finished up with soccer games and enjoying the skate park and swimming pool in our compound, and we also found a new fun restaurant called the Blue Frog. The Blue Frog is kind of like a Hard Rock in some ways, they have about 3 or 4 restaurants in China.