Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Snow, hiking...



It's slowly starting to get colder here...This past weekend we enjoyed (sort of) a 4 hour hike 1 hour drive north of Beijing. It was great to get out of the city but it was definitely colder than I expected. Thankfully I haven't gotten sick from this cold and sweaty trek, and I think my calf muscles have finally recovered. This hike was unique because we started at a small village in the mountains, trekked to another village in the middle of the mountains, climbed to the summit of one of those peaks, and then back down. It was cool to walk through a village that is so completely different from life in the city. We even saw a donkey pulling a big stone to grind corn. And speaking of corn, the harvest of corn from the whole area was drying on the shoulders of the roads! It was weird, and beautiful. Now we know why there are sometimes stones in our cornmeal :) It even snowed a bit while we were walking through one of the villages. Another point of interest from our hike had to be when Scott decided "straight up here" looked closer than going zig-zag up to the summit of the mountain. Of course the other guys had to follow along, while us wives took the trail. We reached the peak and then couldn't see them because it was such a drop over the edge! We started calling down "where are you guys?" until we saw some heads through the brush. But reaching the top required them to climb basically straight up these rocks with a big drop-off. One wife was screaming over the cliff "Turn around and get back on the trail! You don't have medical!" Thankfully we didn't have any serious injuries. Scott actually emerged completely unscathed. One guy emerged with bloody shins (he was wearing shorts) and the last (and older) one emerged sweaty and covered in bits of trees! hehe. It was a funny sight.

This weekend we'll be enjoying turkey again! Our staff is having it's Thanksgiving dinner. I'm looking forward to all the delicious foods! And in 2 weeks we head to Hong Kong for a 3 day conference. It will be warmer there! Our heat comes on this weekend though :) Thank the lord for government heating!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hey, SA's! Finally! A chance to discover what you've been doing! We were able to link to your blog via your recent comment on B&E's Thailand blog. Good to see you in photos! We're looking forward to scanning through your past posts, over the next few days, to find out about your adventures. Blessings on you both. We've missed you from our midst!