China

We took the train from Hong Kong to Mainland China. Coralee really liked Hong Kong and based on everything we had read it seemed like Shenzhen, the border city, was a real dump. We found that it was just like Hong Kong, with two exceptions. No one speaks English! In Hong Kong everyone did... And unlike our closet of a room with no windows in Hong Kong, our room was just like a 3 star hotel in the United States and it was only about $22 USD per night!


For my, Jason's, Birthday we went to "Splendid China" amusment park. We didn't wake up till noon again because we have had jet lag for over a week but we arrived with enough time to see everything. "Splendid China" allows you to see all the sights of China in one day because they have everything in 1/15 scale minature size. We saw the Great Wall, the Forbidden City (Imperial Palace), the Temple of Heaven, the Terracotta Warriors, and dozens of other famous places in China in Minature size. We thought it would be really cheezy but it was actually really cool and they did a great job of making it look real with the paint and the tiny bricks! They also had a wonderful Chineese dance show where they show all the different kinds of dress in China with crazy music and dancing and flying balet. The also had full size replicas of Chineese villages with different ethnic groups in each "Village", Mongols, Tibetens, etc...


The next day we went further into mainland China to a city called Guangzhou. The train ride was very interesting because there were small rice farms surrounded by huge buildings and factories everywhere. What we thought would be a small town turned out to be about the size of Chicago. That night we finally found an Internet cafe so we thought we'd check our e-mail and book a hotel in India. We ended up using Skype and calling our parents and staying 6 hours till 3 am! It was really fun talking to our families as we hadn't done so for such a long time. We love and miss them very much.

We were going to be in China over a week but felt like there wasn't much to do or see here, except buildings and factories so we decided to leave for India early. We simply called British Airways the day before we wanted to leave and changed our flight with a 3 minute phone call and no charge! Our ticket around the world is really cool.


The morning that we left I went to the strangest thing in China. I went to Minsk World. It's a dicomisioned Soviet Aircraft Carrier with tons of propaganda posters that really seemed to be praising the Russians. It was really neat but very strange. I was able to see it because our flight to India didn't leave Hong Kong till 10:30 pm so it was a busy day.

We are doing well, learning to communicate more with each other. But we do need to slow down a little a take time to pray and seek God more regularly.