Beijing Day 2 ~ The Great Wall

The Great Wall of China, one of the wonders of the world and after seeing it we understand better why it is a wonder.  This wall is built on some really steep and rough ground.  The Chinese name for the wall is Wanli Changcheng which means "very long wall".

We went to the wall with our tour guide Lily, it was about a two hour drive out of the downtown area of Beijing to reach the Mutianyu entrance of the wall.  This entrance has less tourist than the Ba Da Ling entrance.

Don't worry, even with less tourist at this site, the hawkers are out and waiting to try and talk you into buying their goods.

The wall measures 8,850 KM that is 5,499 miles long, we walked a very very short part of the wall for about a  6 mile total walk according to our guide, I am thinking more like 4 miles? 

At the Mutianyu part of the wall you can take a cable car up to the wall and a slide, or cable car back down.

Once you reach the top you will be at tower six.

 We hiked up to tower 14,back to tower six and then Scott and the boys went up to tower one and back to tower six. 

Lily walked with us for a very short way, took a family photo and then waited for us at tower six so we could take our time walking the wall.

The hiking is on rough very uneven hand laid ground with many inclines and declines.  It was slow going but we loved being outside in the cool breeze taking in the views.  Here are some of the many pictures we took on our Great Wall hike.

The wall goes from tower to tower, this is where they kept watch for any attacks that might come their way, they would signal the next tower with smoke by day and fire by night and the message would travel along the tower.  Here we are inside one of the towers.

Like I said the climb can be steep from tower to tower as the wall is built on a mountain ridge.

There are some hawkers at various points along the wall selling hot and cold drinks and of all things, snickers candy bars.  We think they get their stuff up to that point on the wall by hiking and using this guys donkey.

We were grateful for the break and the tea.

We decided this was a perfect spot to get some individual photos, so we did......

More scenery:

The hike up to tower one that Scott and the boys took was even steeper than the hike up to tower 14.

Almost everywhere we go people want a picture with the boys as they are "western" the wall was no exception.

At the bottom when you get off the slide/ cable car, these men are waiting to take a picture with you,  so I took one with them and Caleb, they were grunting and putting on a nice show for the picture.

After I took the picture they said "ok, now you pay the money"  I said "money? you never said anything about money"  well it is a trick they try to play but they laughed and let us go with out payment.

After our trek on the wall we were all tired and very hungry.  Lily took us to a great Chinese place to eat that is close to the wall so we could fill up before our two hour ride back to the hotel.

Here are some street scenes from our ride.

We also drove past the site of the 2008 Olympic Games in China, here is the "Birds Nest" and "Water Cube"

It seems that we are frequently in cities with a lot of wires so here is our wire photo for Beijing.

More street photos

Lily took us to a traditional ChineseTea House for a  tea tasting, it was a perfect time of day for some tea, we really enjoyed it.  The tea house is covered with a very heavy fabric for the door.

There is a large drum outside indicating that it is "safe from harm"

You are escorted into another fabric covered private room with your own private tea lady who tells you all about the teas as you taste them.

It really was fun, we liked the tea and the atmosphere. 

We arrived back at our hotel around 5:30 PM.  After resting for a little while we were ready for some dinner.  We walked around downtown a little while looking for a place to eat but really we were so tired our brains just could not make decisions so we opted for something easy and familiar at the mall close by.

Yes, that is Pizza Hut, and it was good.

We have all decided that our day at The Great Wall was our favorite day in Beijing.

Beijing Day 1

Who would of ever thought that our family would be traveling to Beijing.  Living in Singapore has allowed us to do a lot of travel that just simply would not be possible for our budget from the U.S.

Caleb turned 16 on March 16, 2012, yes, it was his "golden" birthday and we wanted to make is special.  I must say I don't think he will forget it.

We left Singapore on March 11 and traveled a budget airline to Beijing China. 

It was the wee hours of the morning when we arrived, 2:00 am.  We were tired and really just wanted to arrive at our hotel so we could go to bed.

Immediately upon exiting the plane we knew we were in a different land, the language was different, it was cold and it smelled smoky, both cigarette smoke and garbage burning kind of smoke.  It was also very hazy at the taxi stand.

Ahhh yes, the taxi stand.  Here we are, four Americans standing out in the crowd needing to go somewhere with four carry on bags, two backpacks, a computer case, a purse and two big suitcases, and let me tell you there was no way we were going to take two different taxis as we don't know the language or where we are going. 

We were approached by a "driver" that was not part of the taxi stand, in our guide book it said in no way should you go with random drivers from the airport, you never know where you will end up.  We declined his offer and waited in the line for about 30 minutes to get a turn at a taxi.  I must say I was sorry I wore my flip flops as it was all of 30 degrees outside, I put on a pair of socks with my flip flops, fitting in with the culture right away.

The taxi we got was SMALL, this is not a problem, when there is a will there is a way and we will fit all of us and our luggage into that taxi.  The driver was saying no way.... you must take two taxis to which we said no way, we are not taking two taxis, we will fit and fit we did, luggage everywhere and on everyone but we fit.  The driver shook his head, started laughing and showed us off to his friends then came to take us where we wanted to go.  As he approached the car he hit his face on the door.  Ouch.

We eventually got to Lee Garden Apartments in Downtown Beijing where we would be staying for the next five days.  It really is a nice place to stay with a great staff, big rooms, and a great location.

We were up early the next day and decided to go out and explore our surroundings.  Tienanmen Square and the Forbidden city were with in walking distance so off we went.

We took in many different sights along the way.

This game is Chinese Chess.

It really was a beautiful day with blue sky, we were told that if you get blue sky it is a lucky day in Beijing.

The Forbidden City is huge, today we just explored the outer court yard.

From the Forbidden City you can easily walk to Tienanmen Square, they are connected.

This picture is leaving The Forbidden City and you can see the guards and the center point of Tienanmen Square. There is a huge set of red, gold studded door that lead you out of the city and into the square.

The other side of The Forbidden City is where you see the famous picture of General Mao.

This is the view from Tienanmen Square, one of the largest public squares in the world measuring 440,000 square meters. 

The square is named for Tienanmen Gate or  Gate of Heavenly Peace that leads into The Forbidden City, here is the gate from the square.

It is where you see the picture of General Mao. 

I must say, standing in the square is a bit surreal, so many things have taken place in this square and the size of it really can not be captured in pictures, it is.....grand.

There are many different food stands, trailers, bikes etc... all over Beijing, no need to worry about being hungry.

If you are brave, there are public toilets everywhere too, some in our family were brave, I was happy to just wait until we got back to the hotel.

Here are some street scenes we came upon on our walk.

This street looked fun with all the red lanterns hanging down so we decided to go down the street and are we ever glad we did.  Caleb has been wanting to eat a fried scorpion for years now and little did we know that we were going to have that opportunity on our very first day in Beijing.

I have video of him actually eating it that I will post in a different blog, Scott and Keegan also gave the scorpion a go along with snake on a stick.  As for Randi, well, she ate some of these yummy strawberries dipped in sugar and a stick along with the rest of the family.

Peking Duck is named after Beijing, this is the place it originated so if you are going to eat it this would be the time.  We did some research and got some recommendations and decided on Da Dong restaurant, it was voted the number one place to eat in Beijing with the best Peking Duck.

The ducks are roasted right on the open fire, then the chef brings it to your table side to carve it into 120 pieces for you viewing and eating enjoyment.

The duck comes with a set, there are wraps, sort of crepe like wraps, radishes, onion, plumb sauce, cucumbers and some sugar.

The skin is eaten dipped in the sugar. Then the meat is placed on a wrap with all the fixings. It is then rolled up and eaten with chop sticks.  We really, really enjoyed the Peking Duck.

It was the perfect end to our fist day in Beijing.  Who would have ever thought we would have this opportunity.

Ginger Beer

When I first thought about posting on our ginger beer making adventure I was going to write a face book note but then I realized that this really is an appropriate post for our Singapore blog.  Why?  Ginger is everywhere here in Singapore and we love it.

I have been reading about and trying to apply to our diet the natural fermented foods from Sally Fallon's book "Nourishing Traditions".  It seems to me that this is much easier to do in my country home in Wisconsin.  I have however been successful at finding the items I need to make my Singapore kitchen a "natural kitchen". 

I decided to give making our ginger beer a try as my whole family really enjoys drinking ginger beer.  It  is like ginger ale but much stronger on the ginger flavor with a little spicy kick to it. 

To start you have to make a "ginger bug".  This is not hard to do after you understand fully what to do.  It takes 7 days to make the bug and you make it in a quart size canning jar or larger. 

Here is the recipe I used to make the ginger beer for our family:
Day 1 :
Place 1 1/2 cups filtered water into a glass jar
wash and finely chop some "old" ginger root, old ginger root is stronger than young ginger root,
place 2 tsp of the finely chopped ginger root peel and all into the jar
add 2 tsp of sugar to the jar
stir and cover with a cheese cloth

Day 2-7
add two tsp. sugar and two tsp. of the chopped ginger (peel and all) to the jar EACH day. Stir and cover.  Small bubbles should start appearing somewhere around day 4 and must be present by day 7 or you have to dump it and start over.  This is the fermentation you are looking for to keep the ginger beer from spoiling and it will give it a natural carbonation.

Day 8
Boil 10 cups water to this add 3 cups natural cane sugar (if you can not find it use regular sugar)
Add the rest of your ginger root cut into large pieces to the pot and let simmer for a good 15-20 minutes.  Remove the ginger and let the liquid cool.

Into a very large bowl pour 20 cups of filtered water and add the juice of 4 lemons ( this must be fresh lemon juice not bottled)  some pulp will be in there and that is ok.

When the boiled sugar liquid is room temperature add it to the bowl of lemon water. 

To this add the liquid from your ginger jar that you have been feeding all week.  I used a fine mesh strainer to dump mine through and then took a spoon to squeeze all of the liquid out of the ginger.  Discard the ginger in the strainer.

Cover this bowl very tightly with foil and set where it will not be disturbed.

This is the bowl we used to rest the ginger beer, just cover with foil and leave alone.

Day 9-14
Do nothing, do not disturb your bowl of ginger beer, leave it alone, do not uncover it or bump it.  When you uncover it on day 14 it will have a sweet yeast smell to it.

Day 15
Bottling day.  You will need about 7 one liter bottles or 8 quart bottles you want the ones with the flip tops and they must be glass, see above, we got our bottles at IKEA here in Singapore, they were $3.00 each.
You will need a cup to transfer the beer into the bottles and a funnel.

Transfer the beer into the bottles and leave some head space to allow the bottle to build up some pressure with out exploding.

With in a few hours of bottling you will have lots of tiny bubbles in your bottles, this is good as you want it to ferment and carbonate.

Day 14-28

After bottling the ginger beer place it in a place where it can be left alone for 14 days, the ginger beer needs to continue to work and carbonate. 

We put ours into a big plastic bin so that if any of the bottles "exploded" we would have an easier time cleaning up the mess.  From my reading I do not think this will be a problem, but just in case it does pop open a bottle it is good to have a plan.

Day 28
You can now enjoy your ginger beer, it is good to put the bottle in the refrigerator for a day before opening and I have read that you may want to open it over a sink just in case it foams up.

We bottled our ginger beer today and we leave for Beijing tomorrow so we are really  praying that there are no explosions while we are gone.

We look forward to trying the ginger beer in two weeks.  If you decide to make some let me know how it turns out.

A Day In Our Life

Singapore has some great public transportation.  I was talking to a taxi driver just last week and he told me that there are over 30,000 taxis on the road at any given time in Singapore.  That is a lot of taxis for an Island 15x24 miles.

With that many taxis you would think that it would not be a problem to get somewhere and usually that is the case, however, if you want to go somewhere in the morning say around 8:45..... good luck.

Today we had a doctors appointment, originally the appointment was at 2:00 this afternoon but the office called and changed it to 9:00 this morning.  I knew that getting a taxi might be a problem.  We could not take the bus because my son just had surgery on his foot and this time of day your foot will get stepped on on the bus.

  I was short on cash becauseI have to pay my grocery bill for the month.  The plan was to take a taxi to the doctor, take a taxi home to drop off my son then take a taxi to go and get some cash.

Getting to the doctor was no easy feat.  I booked a taxi with my I phone app and it was taking a long time to process this is never a good sign.  Sure enough I got a message saying there are no taxis available try back in ten minutes.  I then called a different taxi company and after waiting got the same message, there are not taxis available.  All of this calling has now taken me 20 minutes; we for sure are going to be late to our appointment.

I decided to call the doctor and just tell them we needed to reschedule because I cannot get a taxi, they said "oh no problem, just come when you can, this happens all the time, we will see you later."  Ok so we kept calling and in 15 minutes had a booking confirmation.

As we were waiting for the elevator to go and meet our taxi my phone rang.  It was the taxi driver he was wondering where we lived.  I told him, then I told him again and then again to which he replied "ok ok ok" and then hung up.  Uh oh we are not sure now if the taxi will come or not.  Our only choice is to head out into the sun and wait for him.   Luckily he did end up coming after about 12 minutes.

As you can imagine we are now really late for our doctor appointment but I don't feel stressed over that because they told us it was ok.

  We enter the taxi to find that we were lucky enough to get a "stinky taxi" and a very negative talking aggressive driving taxi driver. 

Traffic was horrible so our normal five minute ride took 17 minutes and due to the time of day and traffic our normal $6.00 taxi fare was $12.00.

Whew. All of this just too simply go to the doctor.  Some days it can get very frustrating to try and get anything done as nothing seems as simple as it should be.

We really miss the freedom of our car, the ability to go to stores  that have what we need when we need it and people who understand you and what you are saying. 

So when you get in your car this week and head out to Target be grateful that you will be able to get done what you have set out to do.

We are very grateful for the opportunity to live here in Singapore and it has been a very positive experience for our family but we want to keep this blog real and really there are some frustrating days.

A Lesson In Civics...Whoes Embassy Is It?

We live a mere ten minutes from the U.S. Embassy here in Singapore, this is an obvious field trip choice for any home school family. We have studied our government many times over the years and wanted to learn first hand what an embassy can do for it's citizens.

Boy did we ever get a lesson in U.S. Government over seas but not the lesson we expected and certainly not a lesson we are in any way pleased with.

We took a taxi as our embassy does not have parking available. Upon exiting the taxi you are met by two smiling but very much not American guards that speak ok English if you listen closely.

I explained that we were citizens and we are here to see our embassy.   Do you have passport business they asked, no we said. Do you have an appointment? No.

We before going to the embassy looked on the web site and did see that for citizen services we need an appointment but we simply wanted to go into the lobby, we were not even asking for a tour, just simply to enter OUR embassy.

The guard gave us a phone number and said we needed to call and get permission to enter. So I took out my cell phone, called the number, got another foreign person this time with poor English skills and after each of us repeating ourselves several times to understand what was being said she told me that we are citizens and we can just enter the embassy directly.

Ok, this is what I thought, it is our right as citizens of The United States to enter our embassy.

We went back to the guards by the door and told them of our conversation and she said ok, you may enter.

Upon entering you are met with a picture of President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton along with more foreign workers and the security scanner.

  We were all set, passports out, all phones, bracelets watches removed.....and then they looked at Keegan's insulin pump. They have no clue what it is,  remember foreign workers at my embassy who don't speak great English, how frustrating to try and explain he needs it because it is giving him medication.

One guard understood and said it is no problem we just need the supervisors ok and because you are citizens you may enter after we get clearance please step aside and wait. Ok no problem we appreciate that there is good security so we don't see this as any big deal.

We wait, and wait, finally I said, excuse me, someone is coming to clear us right, then the phone rings and the guard from outside comes in and tells us that we do not have an appointment so we may not enter the embassy at all. WHAT?!?!

She then says who did you talk to on the phone did you get her name, I said of course I could not get her name she did not speak good English. But she took our passport numbers and birth dates and e-mail address, put us on hold, then told us that we are citizens so it is not a problem we can just go into OUR embassy. To this the foreign guard said I am sorry mam but you can not go in.  You have to call the number and then be escorted by an American into the embassy.  So there must be Americans in there somewhere?

There you have it your tax dollars paying foreign workers at our government facilities to not communicate so well with U.S. Citizens.

Like I said we learned a lesson in civics today and now pray we never  truly need our embassy because really I have no confidence that they know what they are doing over there.  So frustrating, whose embassy is it anyway?