Missives From the 45th Parallel

Well, I am officially 4 days behind on the blog and we are stateside now. Sorry for interuptions folks but this is really Keirans trip and the Chinese Government seemed to find all of my VPNs. I will finish the final four days after a good night sleep so be sure to comeback for the Great Wall, Tianemen Square,and the Forbidden City as well as some tips and advice based on what we learned.

Goodnight!

P.S.- Sienna has decided she would like to write a blog oriented towards tweens…if you have one watch for updates on that.

Woke-up for our last day in Xian and a trip to the Big Wild Goose Pagoda.  It was another gorgeous day here with some pretty decent winds but blue skies.  Xian came about during the Tan dynasty and the emperor’s of this time did not come from prosperity.  You can see this in the plainness of the architecture which lacks the ornaments found in the Qin and Ming dynasties.

The pace of this trip is very rapid and there is very little time for reflection built-in.  Another fourteen hour day yesterday and today was no different.  Up and out early in the morning as we headed out to the Terracotta Warriors.  The story as I gathered it is that the first emperor, Qin (Chin) created the army to follow him into the afterlife.  Emperor Qin was very busy have created not only Terracotta Army but also the Great Wall and the first unification of provincial China.  He was also a cruel ruler and ordered that all of his children and

We arrived at our hotel in Xian after 10 o’clock and followed wound up following the news in Japan.  Very sad situation there but happy that our kids in Sapporo were alright.  My VPN was blocked and that made getting on the blog or Facebook next to impossible.  I managed about 20 minutes before I got blocked again.  I gave up and turned and turned in for the night.

Woke up bright and early in Hangzhou, a delightful town on the banks of West Lake.  Like everything else here its big.  But, because we are out in the country a bit we had blue skies and decent temperatures.  We are only here for about 10 hours so a busy day was in store for us.