day 4 -- temple of heaven

today the clouds lifted and the sun cyphered through as we strolled through the courtyards of the Temple of Heaven... the temple itself was beautiful, but more enamoring to my eye were the people ...



mothers with their babies,
old folk playing cards, instruments and hackey-sack, and an elderly gent charging people to hold his bird (which sacha and i gladly paid for :)). Nate was tracked down by a flock of admiring Asian girls believing him to be Tom Cruise; they insisted on getting a picture with him.

From the temple we took a rickishaw ride through the old part of the city and paid a visit to Mrs. Woo -- a woman who invited us into her home and shared her life story with us (as translated by our guide). She had a beautiful smile. Following this we re-visited Tiananum Square and captured some pictures, due to the lift in fog.

After crashing for a couple of hours at the hotel, we were then picked up and escorted to a Peking Duck dinner and a Chinese Opera (which ended up being delightful, after the characters stopped singing and started acting :)). We then drove 'home' and celebrated Nate's birthday by drinking beer, eating cake (the two DON'T go together) and playing cards.

Tomorrow we'll visit the zoo and snap some shots of fuzzy panda bears! G'night.

day three -- the GREAT wall

despite another day of mist, the wall emerged like a secret passageway to a magic kingdom... it is 6,000 kilometres of stone labour, 700 years old. we only walked part of it, but i've never seen trenton happier. his one dream when we decided to come to asia was to walk the great wall. today, as displayed by this picture (standing atop the highest point of the wall), he achieved this goal. at regular intervals along the wall, towers are available for exploration... trenton bought a russian fur hat to honour the occasion :) i accompanied him in my trapper gear.

we also visited "the sacred way" (where we 'rode' stone animal statues), entered the Ming Tomb museum and dined at two luxurious restaurants... the food consisted of everything from sweet and sour pork, stir fried vegetables, fish, and rice wine. we toasted our future together with the latter (as seen in the picture below).

what a GREAT day...

day 2: forbidden city

today was cold and misty... it included warm memories however. to make it short: an amazing buffet breakfast in the hotel, a fully escorted tour of the 216-acre Forbidden City, the beautiful summer palace and the memorial grounds of Tiananmen Square (where 2-3,000 people lost their life for fighting for freedom). we topped off the evening with a delightful chinese meal of duck and fish, then an amazing and elaborate production called "the kung-fu legend" (you can see sacha and i here with two of the main kunfu-stars). tomorrow we're off to the Great Wall! cheers. (ps.. other pics below include Trenton with our tour guide, henry; trenton outside of the 'pearl market' where we bought real pearl supplies; an elderly woman practicing the art of mandarin-writing out on the sidewalk, trenton and sacha being goofy, and a cute chinese girl.)

day 1 in beijing

hi there. since this is our last big trip before emily heads home, we thought we'd bring you along. is that ok? this is day 1. in a nutshell, we flew with dear friends sacha and nate to beijing, china, where we were met by our portly, kindly yet somewhat nervous tour guide "Henry." he then piled us into a van, and we toured through the 50-million person city to our 26-floor, five-story hotel... a site indeed to behold. with a six-foot-long chandelier, red lanterns, bowls of gold fish, and cherry blossom trees adorning its corridors, all we could do was stare. the rest of the day was spent soaking in the amenties of 70-channel television, trying out the gloriously western-styled showers :), visiting the local supermarket and being escorted home on a chinese-style 'tuk tuk' (a bicycle taxi). the day was finished by a meal of rice noodle-soup, veggies and meat, and beer. until tomorrow...

"apo"

in korean, "apo" is the slang for "pain." that's what i feel right now.

today i said goodbye to a number of students who have become my tiny friends. they're leaving because they've advanced to higher grades...

boys who made me pull my hair out, then want to squeeze them. girls who strove to succeed and yet still laughed easily. my youngest, and most brilliant, students, who were little creations of fun and eager minds. eyes sparkling when teacher walked in; hands raised excitedly with the answer... from the older, feigned disgust at 'grammar' and inexpressable relief when i pulled out the games and the pizza. perhaps i enjoyed being a slice of peace in this crazy over-worked, overachieving culture they're being pulled along in.

i loved learning their language and speaking on their own turf. they respected me for it, even when i butchered the simplest of sayings.

it's so hard to say goodbye. so hard to step out and make new relationships. i'm sure you all know how i am feeling. in some ways, it helps to know they'll miss me too.

we'll be gone for the next week to china, with our friends sacha and nate. we're off to see the Great Wall and panda bears :) the tour includes a five-star hotel and an english-speaking tour guide. should be fun. should help to absolve this pain. then it's back for one more term (for Emily) and two for Trent.

thanks for listening. it helps to vent... i can only pray these little people saw a fragment of Jesus' immense heart in me, believed more in His love because of me.

A retraction

THIS HAS GONE FAR ENOUGH!!! I ate 5 of the 8 octopus balls and Emily ate 3. We were supposed to have split them 50-50. It was Emily who got squeamish not me, as I did eat her last octopus ball. They are not that bad. Just a little piece of octopus leg wrapped in some creamy batter. You can actually see all the little suction cups on the leg. But they don't stick any more, i tried. I could have had more...

(Trenton)

memoirs of japan

Japan was everything we thought it would be and more. A tiny country filled with countless people, everyone walking somewhere, staring straight ahead, determined not to falter in the race of life. Faces were beautiful, fashion was unfathomable, and the sights were breathtaking. Osaka Castle (Osaka-Jo) was a child’s playground for Trenton, who thrives on history; the cherry blossom orchard outlining the castle gave Emily immense joy. One day was spent visiting the castle, then subwaying across Osaka to see the aquarium – a gigantic land of penguins and funny looking fish.

That evening we bought a digital camera (challenge: decipher which of these pictures were taken by our old video camera, and which by our new “Canon”)… The next day we took the train (JR Railway) to Kyoto, the former capitol of Japan, which met us with open branches and glorious spring freshness. We toured one of the prettiest temples, watched hundreds of tourists drink spring water from “holy bowls”, mourned a bit for those worshiping the Buddha (we pray they would know the living God) and delighted in the cobblestone, pottery-lined streets that reminded us all too well of Europe.

Meals throughout our short stay included a visit to a small local restaurant, where two drunken men blew kisses at us. I ate tempura (battered veggies) while Trent had meat on a stick. We also visited an expansive food market one evening, and tried spring rolls and cheese balls; as well, we partook in some “Sake” (Japanese alcohol) and dried squid. One of these pictures portrays Trenton holding Octopus balls… they were alright, for octopus I suppose. Trenton got a bit squeamish. Don’t tell him I told you that. We stayed in a cheap, Japanese style room downtown, where the beds rolled out and the floors were covered in bamboo. I snuck a shot of a Japanese man asleep in the subway, and of a lovely old gentleman taking photos of the blossoms.

All in all, these three days were stuffed full of delicious experiences and unexplainable delights. There were still so many glimpses of sadness, so many heart-tearing moments where you want to help people but aren’t sure how… I don’t know that we’ll ever escape that until Heaven, but we ourselves were helped out by so many Osaka residents our faith in humankind was restored and our spirits lifted.

(PS. After reading this blog, Trenton insists I tell you he ate FIVE octopus balls, while I only ate three. Touche Trenton. However, I managed to keep them all down, lol.)