The beginnings of China!

Hello everybody,

Sorry we haven't updated in a while. In China many internet sites are blocked including our blogg and facebook so we just figured out how to get around that.

We made it to Beijing with no problems. We even got to share the train compartment with two generous Mongols (a Mom and her son that were both hair cutters and had competed in hair cutting competitions). We've recieved so much generosity from people on our train rides here; it's made me try to be more generous as well.

Beijing is huge! but the subway system is really easy and cheap so that really helped us get around. We stayed with a couch surfer named Zhao our first few nights and he was very kind to us. He helped us with our Chinese, helped me in the market, and we watched a movie about the history of Mao (China's Communist Party leader from 1949 to 1979). Quite interesting but hard to follow, that could be said for all three activities.

We went to the forbiden city which was also really big and there wasn't too many people there either which was nice, although at the entrance and exit we still got bombarrded with people trying to sell us stuff. Some parts of the forbidden city were really calming with large trees built into the architecture. There were many temples for all sorts of things like for the emperor to live, a resting place on the way to another place and other temples to get ready for certain occasions. Not all of them seemed so necessary. Often the emperors would never leave this place and it was only open to the public in (I think) the 1970's sometime.

We also went to the great wall which was pretty crazy. Some parts were built on a very narrow ridge of some high mountains. Kind of wonder why you would need a wall there but it looks really cool. In was neat to walk on the parts that hadn't be restored yet. We also went on a zip line from the wall across a river which was pretty cool.

We stayed in at a hostel for part of our stay in Beijing located in the hutong district which is a place with mostly single floor homes and cafes and very narrow passage ways. These places were very different from the almost futuristic scene we saw when we went out to the olympic stadiums. I think China if not just Beijing if full of these contrasts. There's also lots of people selling food and lots of other things on the street. We've been eating a lot of the food from these vendors. It helps us practise our chinese, at least the numbers, and also with the bartering, which I've been getting better at but often forgot about in the begginning. They've got baked yams, dumplings, crepe like sandwhiches, and normal hot sandwhiches with fried potatoes and vegies, as well as cobs of corn and soup which is serve in a bowl but with a plastic bag covering the inside of the bowl. Yeah, everything is given to you in a thin plastic bag. I've been trying to reuse these bags with the vendors though and it's been working not bad. We've also tried hot pot on numerous occasions and I've been trying to increase my hot spice tolerance but with the hot pot is usually gives me an extra tough spice work out. We also got a taste of the Beijing duck too which was really tendor.

I went to an improvization night to help support some local NGO's in Beijing that were working towards making Beijing's energy more sustainable and less polluting as well as working with migrant workers to increase there confidence and leardership skills in order to get better more fullfilling jobs. It made me want to get volunteering which I think will happen when we get down south. We plan to spend more time there.

The air pollution here may not be as bad as Ulaanbaatar but Kyle and I still have been waking up with soar throats. People mostly use coal for heating and cooking and you can see motorcycle trucks (a three wheeled motorcycle with a big box in the back for carrying stuff) carrying it around all the time. As well smoking is allowed almost everywhere including busses and trains so that has been paying its toll on our throats as well.

From Beijing we left for a "small" town called Datong south-west of Beijing. We've been finding that "small" towns in China aren't all that small, for example "small" town Datong has about 1.1million people! We went to the Yungang Caves which involved Kyle and I riding a motorcycle taxi together. The caves were built in the 400's to 500's and have all sorts of buddha statues carved into the stone in the caves. It was really quite neat; the biggest buddha was 17m high! The area around the caves was also interesting because there was a lot of construction going on, due to it being the off season, and they were planting trees everywhere. Not just sapplings, they were planting 20ft trees with a crain. They wanted the place to look good for next year. Makes me wonder how new some of the trees and other sites we've seen really are. We heard from some other people that tourist areas are really good at making new things look old. One place was planting grass in the roofs of houses so that soon it would look like the houses were so old and unkept that grass was now growing out of them.

We went to the Hanging Monastery, which is really just hanging there on the side of a really big cliff face. We also went for a special karaoke night with a couchsurfer which was quite a different experience from what we are used to. We went to a really fancy looking place and waited in the lobby to what seemed like a really fancy hotel. Turns out this building has hundreds of rooms just for a small group of people to come use karaoke and they were all full on a tuesday night so we had to wait awhile. Quite popular. We had fun in the end though.

Now we are in Taiyuan which is the dragon city (capital city) of the Shanxi province and staying with a nice couch surfer named Della who has been really fun. We went to a park that was the palace of the dragons (emperors) of Taiyuan and it was very similar to the forbidden city accept smaller. We also got to play PING PONG!, our first time in China. Strangely enough the place we went had more people playing pool than pingpong but we still had a good time. We also went to the museum here and learned that Shanxi is an area full of archelogical findings which they are able to say that humans and the written history here dates back to 20,000 year bc.

Now we are on our way to Pingyao, only 450,000 people! It's one of the best preserved ancient walled cities in China. Should be pretty cool.

Hope everyone is doing well. Today is the first sunday of advent so Kyle and I can now start singing christmas songs. Horray!

Peace,

Kelly

Quick update

Hello friends and fam!
We've had a really nice time here in Mongolia with a big thanks to Anne (Kyle's cousin once removed, yeah we figured it out finally) and Sam for letting us stay with them and being so hospitable and kind.
After waiting in a stagnant line for almost an hour the ticket booth sudenly was thrown into activation mode and people almost step over eachother to get their tickets. We got one! so we will be heading to Beijing early tomorrow morning and arriving the day after that. Unfortunately we couldn't make our way south first on the local train and see the Gobi because the local trains are still closed. Can't win them all.

The Plan:
Beijing tomorrow.
Stay there for a few days maybe a week
Then south along the east coast until we get to Guangzhou (sorry about my spelling there)

Lots of love,
Kelly

More Eye Candy

Top: Border town in Russia.

Top 2: Kelly and Kyle arrive into Irkutsk, Russia (Kelly was tired).
3: Red Square in Moscow
4: Right Kyle's favorite thing at the Hermitage (a wheel chair elevator)

Eye Candy

Left: One of our last days on the Finnish Tour. Alunda, on her side here, was exhausted.
Below: Kyle holding us up again!!

L
Left: Chilling in a cafe in St. Petersburg.
Below: Ekenas, Finland. Our accomadation for the night after a long rainy day.

Left: Talliin, Estonia. From the roof of couchsurfers place.

Land of the Mongols

Sam bah Know! (Can you guess? Hello in Mongolian)

So we have arrived into Mongolia! We've been here now for almost two weeks actually. We trained to Ulaanbaatar where we spent a couple days touring around the city and desperately trying to get rid of our colds as most people walked the streets with face masks, attempting to protect themselves from the Swine flu. (Just today we had to get face masks in order to use one of the only remaining open internet cafes. Fortunately I was allowed to wear my balaclava so I didn't have to buy a mask. Yay!)

Then we headed out for a horse riding trek to the "Ancient Capital": a small, quite unexciting town. The horse trek was really cool. The highlight for me and I think Kyle too was staying with Nomadic families in their Gers ( smallish, circular, mobile houses that we know as Yurts but here they are called Gers pronounced Gears).
We stayed with one family for three nights and got to help with scooping poop, herding cows, goats, sheep, and horses, choping wood, taking care of calves, leading massive Yaks, and taking down, moving and reconstructing one of the Gers! Amoung many other things. We were constantly summond by whistles or pointing gestures to our next task for the day.
I really enjoyed it. The families really took us in and put us to work! Which made me feel like I was contributing and earning my keep.
We also ate all our meals together with the families, which consisted of meat, home made noodles or bread and almost every kind of concocktion you can think of from cow, goat, and/or horse milk. Lots of dairy products: milk teas, cold horse milk beer, incredibly hard yogourt cookies, soft butter or cream pancakes/creepes.
Living in a Ger we quickly found out that privacy is non-existent and that, at least in one family, yelling is niether uncommon nor taken all that seriously.

We have just arrived back into Ulaanbaatar again and are staying with Kyle's second cousin and are hoping to get involved with some volunteer work. However, the odds are not in our favor: It's winter, schools (as well as the "Black" market, many internet cafes and bars) have been closed due to swine flu, and major roads in Mongolia are soon to be closed to try to stop the spread of the swine flu. Meaning that we can't help in the schools, agricultural projects are at a stand still, and rural areas will not be accessible. So we'll just have to see and hope we can leave in the next couple weeks when our visas expire!!
We were quite lucky however, to have done our horse trek when we did and arrive back in UB before the road closures as well our stay with Kyle's relatives have been great so far. Very interesting hearing what they have to say and great hospitality.


The Tentative Plan:
Stay in UB for the next week or so
Then make our way south to see the Gobi desert and hopefully stay with a friend in a southern town
The take the train or bus to Beijing and likely along the east coast from there.

Take care everybody
Enjoy the day (it's all you have)
Kelly

Kelly's Russian Observations

“Dobrea utra” (good morning in Russian) friends,
Although our stay in Russia was rather short I feel like I came across a lot of interesting things.
The culture seems to be shockingly different than the ones I've come
across so far. Here are some of my observations (perhaps completely
unrepresentative but this is what my [limited] experience has revealed to
me).

Hard to Communicate
When we first arrived, St. Petersburg was a busy place: crazy traffic,
lots of small scale construction (one or two men working with hand tools on the side of the road) that would continue until 9 or 10 at
night, and plenty of uniformed men (police and many different types of army
uniforms). Asking for directions or answers often proved unsuccessful for no
one that we asked spoke english, even the younger generation which was a
bit of a surprise for me. It seems that Russian people are less willing to communicate non-verbally. Once they heard that we didn’t speak Russian they would just not bother. The common response to our questions was a quick "no".
However, we did meet some extremely hospitable, kind and generous Russian people that showed us around and made large efforts to communicate with us in English and/or sign/body language. Namely, Sasha, Masha, Denis and his Mom. Thanks again you really made our travels through Russian fun and insightful.

Tough outer shell
People walking in the streets predominantly wore tough or grumpy faces and
I found myself commonly doing the same in order to blend in and to feel
less like a target. It was, surprisingly, fun. We called it our "Russian
night time faces and voices". But it was also hard to meet people because
I felt like I had to be tough and talking to people made me feel more
vulnerable or weak. Friendly people are so much easier to confront. And
often when people did smile I felt it was more like a sneer or smirk, like
they were laughing or making fun of us. That's just the feeling I got
though. People did laugh and make small talk with eachother at times too. A friend from Belgium made an interesting point that people in Russia haven't experienced democracy like we "the west" have. The USSR only broke up in 1991, not so long ago at all, and people are still very affected by that. Perhaps a
reason for the less showing of emotions in the streets. I also read in a
book called "Russia" which gathered, via personal interviews, that Russia is still not in a democracy, that the elections were fixed, and that people aren't really happier now than they were before.
We were also told that once you get to know someone in Russia they can be really kind but it is a steep curve to get over.

Social interaction:
The way Russian people talk to eachother or to foreigners seems to be very
attacking and also very honest and blunt. Listening to our hostel
receptionist in Moscow converse with the guests really showed me this. But
this also seems very normal for them and that they don't take offense. This is just the way the communicate.This was hard for me to understand. I kept taking offense.

Bribes and theft:
Bribes and mugging seems to be just a part of life.
A friend described mugging as such:
Perhaps I would get stopped by the police
They'll say I ran a red light or made a mistake.
They'll ask what shall we do about this?
She might say Well you know I'm a poor student and I don't have much money.
And they'll say maybe we'll have to take away your license?
And she'll say, well maybe I can pay something? (I'm not sure about the
last line there but it ends in paying off the police). This is because the
police don't get paid so much but the bribes don't stop there. That police
officer will then have to bribe her boss for something and that boss
bribes her boss all the way up to the government level and then to
corporations perhaps.

Theft also seems to be rather frequent. A friend told me that her mother
got her purse stolen so many times she lost count and that it is quite
common that a person has been robbed or pick pocketed at least once in St.
Pete. “Yeah it sucks but you live through it”, seemed to be the attitude.

Food:
Russians also drink a lot of tea. The trains would have hot water on demand and lent out free tea cups. They are not too big into vegetables though, which I think may have something to do with poor people growing a lot of there own vegetables. Hence, eating vegetables is seen as a lower class thing to do.

More differences:
The Suana or Banya seems to be common but it is apparantly not as hot
However you get hit with sticks during the process and wear a funny hat to
protect yourself from your hair.

When I mentioned that I wanted to help out, "contribute", along my travels
a friend I met in Russia told me that was a very western thing to do and that
Russian people really don't have this need or desire.

Of course, I noticed that trash on the street is very common and that
there is no signs of recycling or composting and the tap water is not
drinkable. However, I found out that in Irkutsk there is an environmental
movement going on that I was completely unaware of which means that there
could be the same movments in St. Pete and Moscow that I'm not aware of
either.

Well, again these are just my observations and experiences but I thought
it might be interesting. I found it interesting. Please feel free to make
comments or questions about them. I hope I didn't offend anyone. I've
tried to be as true to my experience as possible.

Keep on learning and teaching
Kelly

How to "GET BETTER!" in Russia...

This year for my birthday I got a cold. Fortunately for me, this date
was also directly before I was to be in a train for a good 80 hours
with a Russian mother and her 13 year old translator son (he knew how
to count very well at least).
I soon found out that the trick to getting over sickness in Russia is
to eat. A lot. And it's not just any food that you eat. It's anything
and everything that has at least enough sugar or fat in it to kill all
those germs. For me, this meant cookies with "NOT LITTLE" jam on it (I
feel the need to write what was said in Russian in capital letters,
for it seems like everything is spoken that way). Once the cookies ran
out, I was to put jam in my tea. Once I couldn't drink any more tea, i
was to just eat spoonful of jam. Of course after every dosage of sugar
I was to sleep, which wasn't exactly easy. But when a Russian tells
you to do something, there's no way out. After my sugar overload, it
was time for pre-packaged chicken drumsticks with salami and cheese.
And then the train stopped, more cookies were bought, and more cookies
were stuffed into me.

It's quite funny, because I quite enjoy these foods in and of
themselves (except maybe the pre-packaged chicken legs...) however the
quantity of it all spoiled the effect.

It seems that everything in Russia is a bit forcefull. I later found
out that when someone sneezes in Russia, they respond with "GET
BETTER!" said of course with much gusto.

Oh Russia... Well, I'm in Mongolia now and still have a cough. I think
I'll try some other recipes for getting better. I'm actually quite
self conscious about it here because half the population of
Ulaanbaatar are wearing facemasks... Apparently there's been a big
outbreak recently here. Here's hoping!

Peace out world,

Kyle

p.s. For those of you who didn't notice, Kelly and I are now sharing
this blog. We've decided, in order to cut back on tensions over
writing style, that when we write together, it will be more of a
update, when we write independently, it will be whatever we like