2011-10-25 Heritage Park

We wandered around a heritage park by the Big Wild Goose Pagoda or Dayanta. (Da for big/ Yan for wild goose/ Ta for pagoda). The park is full of bronze statues including this one of woman holding a sword gracefully. There is much Buddhist and Tang dynasty history in Xi'an. We left our apartment intending to visit the biggest museum in the province, but it was closed on Mondays. We had a walk about around the pagoda and a Tang Dynasty open mall for as long as Paula's legs would last. Then we took a taxi to a hot pot restaurant for an extravagant (for China) dinner.

2011-10-21 Qu jiang Park

We rode our bikes to Qujiang Park on the opposite side of town from our apartment. The park has this large hot air balloon ride, but we avoided the temptation to get a better view. After all it was smoggy.

The park surrounds a large lake. No stone throwing or swimming is allowed. There is a wide path around the lake, but we needed to rent bicycles to ride it. Our bikes were not allowed. We were stopped by a friendly by insistent teenager in uniform who asked us to park our bikes in the bike lot.

Just south of the park is a wonderful mall (in the sense of the Washington DC mall) dedicated to the Tang dynasty, China's most powerful and prosperous. These flowers were stunning.

2011-10-17 Paula's MRI

We had planned to send the MRI to Utah with Paula's friend Amanda, but Amanda was in Beijing to sort out her visa issues and ended up going straight to Utah without a visit back to Xi'an for this or her luggage for that matter. After retrieving the MRI from Amanda's orphanage, I was able to talk the post office into packaging it securely for the ransom of 7 yuan ($1.20). My English department supervisor will now hand carry the MRI to Washington DC where she will mail it to Utah. We can only hope.

Update - the MRI film arrived in SLC and Jeff delivered it to Steve Aslami who looked at it with a radiologist. Their recommendation - get treatment as soon as possible. It looks like this will end our China experience. Now - how to get us out of our contract?

2011-10-15 Li Shan

We spent the day taking a taxi to Li Shan (shan means mountain) where we enjoyed beautiful views, clean air, local culture, our friends, the taxi driver, and this Buddhist shrine for Lao Mu (Heavenly Mother) with her first and second counselors and apostles. Lao Mu formed man from the dust of the earth, instituted marriage to allow for procreation and established seven rules for conduct between humans.

We kept our taxi for the day and the driver needed to stop for propane. We had to get out of the taxi just in case. A fiery blast would have ruined our day.

2011-10-08 Taiping National Forest

We went to Taiping National Forest Park near our university with Chen liu, a senior physics major who plans to attend UC Berkeley next year. The river came down a steep canyon gorge with waterfalls and pools. We walked to the first waterfall and you can see by the map that we only went a limited distance. The place was beautiful and reminded us somewhat of Big or Little Cottonwood Canyons.

2011-10-07 Snow at Home

There is beauty all around when there's snow at home. We're enjoying sunny days in Xi'an while it snows in Salt Lake. Melanie called to tell me it was snowing, and Carl Sarahs (the asst. pro at Willow Creek CC) sent this photo looking down the first fairway.

2011-10-07 A Day with the Thelers and Butlers

We spent the day with the Thelers and Butlers, co-owners with us of our new house in St George, who were in Xi'an at the end of their Silk Road tour. We went to the Xi'an Horticultural Expo which we enjoyed immensely on a prior visit, and we rented bikes to save Paula's back and Jeff Butler's plantar faciitis from too much exertion. In this photo we are standing in front of a sand sculpture of the founders of the People's Republic - this being National Day holidays in celebration of the founding of the country. Our tickets to the Expo were provided by our university, but we found out that for National Day we need a more expensive ticket. In our discussions with the ticket folks we discovered that since we are all over 60 years of age we could get into the park for free, but we had to prove our age. The Butlers and Thelers had copies of their passports, I used my Utah driver's license, and Paula used my insurance card.

2011-10-05 Xiao Yen Ta

I hiked up 13 floors at the small wild goose pagoda or Xiao (small) Yen (wild goose) Ta (pagoda) and took this panorama shot looking west. Nix and Christiana, two of my better English students, took us for tour of this park and pagoda and the Muslim Quarter section of Xi'an. The pagoda was damaged by earthquake in 1400 something, and has never been repaired. The park around the pagoda and the museum are remarkably beautiful.

In the Muslim Quarter, at the insistence of our guides, we ate mutton at a local restaurant. The dish was a mystery to us, but our fear of offending our hosts lead us to eat and enjoy (at least a little).

The Muslim section of town is notably chaotic and crowded, but with local students guiding us we managed to navigate around and sample some of the local cuisine.