I found the bog this morning, after returning from the Guadalupe Mass at Mission Dolores in San Francisco. There were a number of babies and small children in the largely Mexican crowd. Your poem is a reflection of some of what I had just seen.
On behalf of my grandson who I honored in this blog entry, I thank you! The Mass sounds like it was wonderful – Ellen
While we were in Beijing, we wanted to see Olympic Park. This was an interesting thing to accomplish.
I don’t know if all tours are run like this in China or if we just got some bad tour mojo….. but …. yikes. Our travel agent planned an itinerary for our day and a half in Beijing. We asked to go to the Great Wall – the section that you walk up and luge down. That did not happen. We went to the wall and walked up but we also had to walk down. That was a big bummer!
He also coordinated visits for us to see the Summer Palace and Ming’s Tomb. I ask you – why would we go to stuffy ole Ming’s tomb when we could see where Michael Phelps made history? Duh? And why would we go to the Summer Palace when we could see the Panda bears. I mean, really. Honestly, if we would have had more time, we would have so gone to Ming’s Tomb and the Summer Palace but time was short and we were traveling with three younguns who love to swim – so priorities, right?
When we got on the tour mobile, we asked to make some changes to our original schedule. OOOOOOOppppps. Apparently that is not acceptable – well, it can be acceptable if you are willing to pay more. Huh? We wanted to change two sites for two other sites. In America, we call that a “no-brainer” – in China it is apparently called an “increase in fees”. Got it.
We were also told that we were going to be charged more money because we were not going shopping. You read that right – n.o.t. going shopping. Huh? We did not ask to go shopping. And, shopping was not on our original schedule. But, now we were going to pay to not shop. Hmmmmmm.
Oh, and our tour guide was happy to take us by an ATM machine so we could pay in cash. Yeah, how do you think that worked out for her?
So, very long, very frustrating story short – we made the changes and only had to pay extra for the zoo fees. Now, that makes more sense. And hubby had sense enough to suggest insist that our travel agent in Delhi be billed by our guide’s travel agency directly in Beijing – no cash transactions, thank you very much. So nice of you to offer though. tee hee. (Now you know I did not just marry hubby for his good looks.)
We quickly put it all behind us and walked in awe through Olympic Park. It is a pretty cool place. Most of the signage in China is in, well, Chinese – so it was fun to see this sign that we could actually read.
And then, of course, the water cube. Unfortunately it was not open – but we used our imagination. 😉 I could easily imagine Bear, Flower, and Angel diving off the same block that Michael Phelps used. Can’t you?
There were some pretty awesome statues throughout the park. And if you stand at angle with the sun in your eyes and lean to the left and lift one foot up, this guy absolutely resembles Michael Phelps.
Maybe he was trying to envision the swimming statue as Michael Phelps, too? What? He could be. Or, maybe, it’s just hard to hold a sailboat with no arms.
Sure, it’s nice information to know, but it didn’t so much help on the interpretation side of things.
Travel in China is different than what we have experienced in the rest of Asia. Truly, not many of the people we encountered spoke English. This lady and her sister were so kind to help hubby negotiate with a vendor for a better price on the stuffed mascots. If you plan to visit China, learn from our mistakes, you’ll want to know this about shopping with vendors in Beijing (and perhaps all of China). It is wise to have money in smaller denominations. Otherwise the vendors are likely to give you counterfeit bills as change. Wanna know how we know that? Go ahead. Take a guess.
We tried to buy her sister a set of mascots too but the only thanks she wanted was a picture with our family.
Next, we headed over to the zoo. Fun Fun. We have seen a panda or two at the zoo in Washington, DC, but the Beijing zoo has at least a dozen of them. And here was another sign we could read.
Anybear, we did have a wonderful afternoon and hope to go back some time and see more of the historical stuff.
Tagged beijing, birds, china, chinese, counterfeit, cube, mascot, mascots, michael, mings, money, nest, olympic, palace, panda, pandas, park, phelps, rings, shopping, signs, statues, summer, swim, swimming, tomb, tour, tour guide, tourist, vendor, water, zoo	
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Defending a slightly under competetive total of 138 the fielding attacking performed admirably but too many extras kept the opposition in the game.
With 6 required to win in the last over and 1 wicket in hand HowickPak scrapped through on the last ball with no wickets in hand.