Safe & Sound

Yes things are crazy right now in China. The recent earthquake has kinda shaken things up (unintentional pun). I barely noticed the small tremor we got here in Beijing at 2:30 on Monday. We were in school...I was standing at the front of the class and felt dizzy for a moment, as if I was sick. Later on I found out the reason, and that I wasn't the only one who thought I was sick :) Our students didn't even notice, so why would we evacuate? Some parents were wondering why not, when other schools did. Maybe we should first get an Earthquake Evacuation procedure! hmmm.....

Almost two weeks ago now we went on an AWESOME, memorable camping/hiking trip on a section of the Great wall. We planned to go with some co-workers who'd been before, but they backed out....so we ended up planning this trip on our own, blindly. Thankfully we had some other adventurous friends who trusted us to the task. We got a driver and off we went, 6 of us, to a more remote section. Hardly any people! That's an amazing thing when you live in such a crowded country. Unfortunately the china traffic delayed our arrival, so it was 6 pm by the time we made it to the entrance of the park. We hiked up, and then once we figured out which direction to go on the wall, we hiked as far as we could and found a flat tower in which to pitch our tent. We made a smorgasboard for dinner: baked beans, mac 'n' cheese, soup, buns, boiled eggs. So good! Us 4 girls slept in the tent, while the two boys gladly slept outside on mats.

At 2:30 I saw some lights.....prayed it wasn't lightning....but it was. At about 4am we woke everyone up, grabbed everything that was sitting outside, including the boys, and huddled inside the tent as it started to rain. We were completely, and entirely UNprepared for rain. No rain fly for the tent, no rain coats, nothing! Thankfully it wasn't too heavy and only lasted about 40 minutes. Once it stopped there was nothing else to do except pack up and hit the road. On the road at 5am it took us about 3 hrs to make it to our destination, Simatai park. Along the way we met some other really cool people who had also camped out for the night. Even though we didn't have clear skies and thus couldn't see the wall for miles in the distance, it was so wonderful to be up there in the clouds. Beautiful.

We have 4 weeks left of school. But sometimes it feels like just 1. I forget how much we have to do still. We're planning our vacation already - to Mongolia for about 10 days as soon as school is out. Should be a blast!

That's all for now folks!