2011-11-26 Thanksgiving in St George

We spent a relaxing weekend in St George for Thanksgiving with the Ford family. Brian and Natalie were not up to the long, traffic congested drive from LA, and I don't blame them one bit. We had a traditional turkey dinner, touch football game, TV football, games, bike riding, tennis, basketball, etc.

2011-11-24 Golfing in St George

It's difficult to adjust to life back in the US. But, on the other hand, I did golf with Mark Cohen and Mike Archer at Entrada in St George and really enjoyed myself. So it's not all bad to be back.

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.