We are home!

We got in late Saturday night. Maelyn went to school on Monday as well as Mike going to work. We did not look forward to coming home to snow after sunbathing in Hawaii all week. We were still getting over the jetlag from China, now we have more to get over. I'll post more about China at a later date. Thanks to everyone who prayed for us and posted comments while we were away.

Hello from Dalian

We are in Dalian right now. It is the prettiest city in China. It is on the Yellow Sea and surrounded by mountains. It is so clean. I would recommend this city to anyone visiting China. Every night there has been fireworks all over the city because of the Spring Festival. They celebrate for weeks. They had firecrackers on the sidewalk and really scared me while walking. We took a bus tour today. It was so nice to see the ocean and the waves crashing against the rocks. It would be absolutely beautiful in the summer months here. There is no snow because it is spring here. We did this whole trip with no snow! We have been staying in a really nice apartment with a toilet. The dvd's are $1.00 cdn so we have stocked up. Our apartment has a dvd player so we have been catching up on movies. We fly out this Saturday back to Hawaii for one week. I can't wait! I miss Hawaii and western food. We have been eating chinese food for every meal. The rest of the team are at a Japanese sauna right now. It is supposed to be really fancy with hot springs and different types of saunas. We are having supper at Starbacks right now. Kentucky Fried Chicken is so popular in China. It's like Macdonalds back home. A popular drink here is coffee mixed with tea. It's really good.

Hello from Beijing

We have been in Beijing all week enjoying the sights. We've been to Tinamen Square, Forbidden City, Acrobatic Show, the new Silk Market (it used to be Silk Alley but is now in a multi-level building), and today we did the Great Wall. We went to a different part of it this time. I didn't climb very far but Maelyn made it to the top with some of the team. Even Mike didn't go. This is the child who doesn't like to walk so I don't know what motivated her! We leave at 6:30 am tomorrow to catch a plane for our next destination. It is on the Yellow Sea and is supposed to be very pretty. No snow here. The first day of spring was last Sunday. The weather has been nice for walking around. Beijing is such a clean city from the other ones we've been in and the traffic has improved since we were last here. We took Maelyn to the hotel we stayed in when we got her. It was so strange to see it again with her being almost eight years old now. We drove past the stadiums where the olympics will be. There are 45 stadiums being used. We went out for pizza for my birthday. It tasted so good after eating chinese food for two months. Our hotel is really nice for $28 a room including a chinese breakfast buffet. It is so nice to have a toilet and hot shower all to ourselves for a few days. The other two teams are here with us so it has been nice hearing their stories on their adventures. Thank you to everyone who posted Birthday wishes to me! Bye from Beijing