Chinese New Years Fireworks

The Chinese always shoot off fireworks to scare away the evil from the family. They are totally legal so what do any good Minnesotans do? They buy them. We liked them so much that we went back for more. We blew up a thousand fireworks at a time on the sidewalk outside Kyles's apartment (this was the second batch). This is all for the benefit for Andrew and Brandon, our family pyrotechnics. We decided to get some aerial fireworks like our 4th of July (they come 49 to the box). The second video is some of the shots of the high boomers that shot way up in the sky and exploded into many colors. Remember, the Chinese invented fireworks. Now if you multiply that by 12.5 million people in Tianjin or 1.4 billion in the whole country, it was a very noisy time of year. Nobody minds. The two biggest days was Nov 7 (New Years) and Nov 11 (the 5th day of New Years). It was non stop everyday of the week, and some of them were right outside our window. We just had the small ones. Some people bought the 4 inch mortars. All the cars sold here have alarm systems installed and all of the cars' alarm systems were going off as the fireworks went off. I wonder how many car batteries were drained. This was great fun. Andrew and Brandon, enjoy the videos because you will probably never get to do this.

The Great Wall of China

We made it to China. We left our house at 3:25AM on Feb 2. Our flight to China left Minneapolis at 6:00Am and we were supposed to be at the airport at least 2 hours before for international flights. We arrived at the NWA ticket counters at 3:50Am and they were all closed. Two other families were waiting also. So much for the 24 hour airport. A cleanup person said that someone might show up for work at 4:30. The line started to move then. Our gate was on the NWA end of the terminal. The security gates were also closed except to two on the other end of the building (We were told that they would open up at 5:30). So we hiked down and waited and waited to get through. We got through security just before 5:30 and walked all the way back to F40. When we got there everyone had already boarded the plane. We were the last ones, except the standby people. We left on time for Detroit, then Tokyo to Beijing. It was snowing in Tokyo and we left the gate 15 minutes late. We later found out that Tokyo had several delays and cancelations because of the snow. We got to Beijing about 9:30PM on Feb 3 (we gained a day plus Beijing is 14 hours ahead of Minneapolis). Jack, our driver was waiting for us and we got to the hotel at 10:30PM. We knocked on Kyle and Tiffany's room (two down from ours) to let them know we made it. Monday was a rest day for us. Kyle and I went to Tianamen Square and we all did some shopping. Tuesday was the best. We hired a driver to take us to the Great Wall and spent several hours there (check out Kyle's blog). After purchasing the tickets, we had to make our way through the gauntlet for vendors , trying to sell us everything under the moon. If we had a hat on, they would try to sell us another hat. Everyone had T-shirts. We ignored them and made our way to the wall.This is our first up close look at the wall.

We met some other Americans and invited them to walk on the wall. Actually they were Kyle, Tiffany, Ellie and Didi.
Yep, that's us.

From here the wall looks like it goes on for ever. To the upper right of this picture the wall is in the un-restored condition of ancient ruins. The part of the wall we were on was restored in 1989.
We came across one of the guards at one of the watch towers, who was sleeping. Gosh, Didi missed the whole trip.







This is all of us at the end of our journey.