Yangtze River, April 23, 2009

A trip of a lifetime.
Not the best weather.
Not the best accomodations.
Not the best communications.
Worth the trip.
This part of China is very remote and yet there are millions of people that live there. It is really inconceiveable the amount of people and the happenings on the river.
When you reach a city that has more people than the entire population of California and you have never heard of it...
When a "shop girl" tells you she can't afford to go to college because it costs $1,500 US/year.
When you see baby chicks roasted on a stick for a snack.
When you see stairs that seem to be endless climbs that are just for people that may have been up river for shopping and have to climb 50 or more flights or stairs to get to ground level. The to climb another ten flights or so to their apartment that has no air conditioning.
The Chinese people were very welcoming here and very happy to see our children. They don't get many children on these trips so they went out of their way to accommodate them. You will see an artist giving Kathleen and Nicky caligraphy lessons with ink and brushes on rice paper.
We too Chinese 101 from the river cruise director and both Kathleen and Nicky know think they need to learn how to speak Mandarin.
I can tell you we had many an unusual experience, wonderful experience...it wasn't perfect but glad we went for sure. The crew on the river boat went out of their way to make us happy.
Our pictures are not in the best of story telling order as we are packing late tonight to head out for Bejing in the early morning. Any stories will have to wait.
Two things.
The Chinese invented paper.
The Chinese invented porcelin. When porcelin plates became popular in the West, people just started calling it CHINA!!! Did you know that???































The Weldens with their new panda! Nicky and Kathleen would have liked to take this guy home but there is not enough bamboo in Alabama to keep him happy. All they do is eat and sleep.


In Chongqing, they not only have 33 million people, they have pandas!! We went to the fabulous zoo there and saw giant pandas! Of course, a trip to China is not complete unless you have a panda puppet or purse, like the one our friend Wolfgang is modeling for us!









It took us 29 hours to get to Yichang, where we were to get on our river boat. Fog rolled in and in 14 years of these people operating this trip, they were not able to bring the boat to shore for us to board! We had to go to a nearby hotel that was almost one hour away! When you travel, you can't expect everything to be a Ritz-Carlton and it wasn't. However, it was clean but hot and we had a place to sleep. Never had a pillow filled with RICE before! The internet here has been down all day. It is now almost 8:00p.m. We will try to post some stories and shots tonight but may not be able. AND just as a quick note...for some reason Japan has very strict internet restrictions. We may not have Internet service for a week when we are around and in Japan.