The Guangdong Museum

After we got back from Beijing, we settled into a routine.

7:30 (usually): Wake up
7:40-9:00ish: Eat breakfast, get ready for the day, read scriptures.
9:00-lunchtime: School
Lunch
After lunch-4:00: School
The rest of the day is free!

We like having things flexible so that we can go do things when we want. I love homeschool in that respect! More to come on daily life. We wanted to go out and do something, so we set aside a day to go to the Guangdong Museum. It was so cool! It was really big, so we didn't see all of it. We plan to go back though. We went to two exhibits. The first one was about "Things in Guangdong." It had animals and gems and jade carvings! It was amazing!

The outside of the museum.

This is a hand-carved jade ship! The detail was just amazing!

This is a hand-carved ivory ball. It has multiple  layers inside it! 

This was hand-carved eagle. It was huge!

Snake skeleton!

The wild animal exhibit.

These sea animals were hung so that it looks like you are in the ocean!

This plant skeleton was huge! And in mostly one piece!

This dinosaur was smiling at me! :)


We also went to the Ink stone exhibit, which was pretty boring.
It was a bunch of ink stones. :)

All in all, it was a fun outing and we definitely want to go back!

Beijing Part 2 (Finally): Fulbright Orientation

Sorry it took sooooooooo long for me to post this! We went to Shenzhen (pronounced shunjun) for district conference so I was gone for the weekend. We also went to the Guangdong Museum and that was way cool too. I will blog about all this soon!  Now to Beijing. After we were done with the Great Wall on Saturday, we went to church on Sunday(and Dad met 4 of his former students and Mom saw her old Chinese teacher! Small world) and then we went to the welcome dinner at the Fat Duck, the restaurant in the hotel that we stayed in. We met the other Fulbrighters and their families at the dinner. There were three other kids at the orientation and while the Fulbrighters were at meetings, we did fun stuff like go to the aquarium, have a PROFESSIONAL mask painter teach us how to paint opera masks( this guy has gone big places and won money with these masks!) and go the park, just to name a few. Thank you Ms. Yang( the lady who did this for us) for everything! The hotel we stayed in was called the Renaissance Hotel and it was very fancy! It had a swimming pool on the top floor, which all the kids would drag their parents to ( including us!) and swim together every night. We had fun together! There was also a WONDERFUL breakfast buffet every morning, and a "smoothie guy" as we called him. He made smoothies for you out of fruit and yogurt. They were so yummy! We had lots of fun that week, and we will miss the other Fulbright people. It was so fun to get to know them! And now for the pictures...

The view from our hotel room on the 19th floor at night.

The building across from our hotel had tons of garbage its roof!

This shark at the aquarium was so big! And there were 2 of them! It was
about as long as I am tall!

These jellyfish had a light behind them that changed colors so it looked
like they changed colors.

The drum ceremony in the drum tower that we went to see.
It was really loud!

Me "holding" a drum! :)

Dad and Tia in a rickshaw, a little carriage type thing that is
pulled by a bicycle. 

These girls were supposed to be taking care of the business, but they were
 all on their phones! Typical teenagers.

These fish at the park knew we were going to feed them!



Well that was our trip to Beijing. I will be back with our trip to Shenzhen
soon...

FYI

Tia has a blog now! Her blog address is: Tiajblog.blogspot.com
It's pretty cool, you should check it out.

Beijing part one: The Great Wall!

I thought you all might be interested in our trip to Beijing! I will split it into 2 parts. Here we go!

After we got to Guangzhou, we stayed in our apartment for a few nights, then we flew to Beijing for orientation. We went early so that we could do some sightseeing. The main thing we did was go hike a section of the Great Wall! It was amazing! The view was beautiful! We were VERY hot! You ride a chairlift up to the Great Wall, then ride a toboggan down! (If you want) We had fun doing that! Tia was carsick on the way up, but as we were walking by the shops full of souvenirs, Dad says we can get something on the way back. Suddenly we have miss perky turkey over here, chattering about what she is going to get. (She got a parasol and a fan.) We had a great time! Here are the some of the pics I took.

Us on the Great Wall!

An old cannon on the Great Wall

Mom,  Dad, and Tia in one of the guard towers

One of the vendors had his donkey with him! It was
standing next to the Wall. I think it carries the vendors
stuff for him

A guard tower on the wall
(sorry for the sideways pic, I don't know how to turn it.)

This is one of the many vendors on the Great Wall.
There is one outside of almost all the guard towers.

Tia and Dad in the chairlift on our way up.

The beginning of the toboggan track.

The beautiful view!
(another sideways one! Sorry)

Well, thats all I have to say about the Great Wall.  We had a great
time and it was a great experience! I will be back with part 2 later!

Loving Life!

Hi Everyone!
We are having some trouble with our VPN so I couldn't get onto my blog for awhile! We have a VPN that works most of the time now so I should be able to keep up on my blogging. Just know that if I don't post anything for a long time, it's because we are having trouble again.
We are enjoying China a lot! We live on the campus of South China Normal University, the college Dad teaches at. To get here, we had to fly from Idaho Falls to Salt Lake, from Salt Lake to LA, then from LA to Guangzhou. All in all, about 18 hours. Here are some pics from the trip so far.

11:00 pm dinner at the airport. Bread and juice, yum!

Tia with the Chinese version of a cupcake.(Bread in a cup)

The roof of our building.

Our stove

So that is just some of what we've been doing. I will post more later!