Rainy Day in Dandong

Ian and I are usually awake around 5 am...
so he plays gameboy and I blog until Asher is awake.

The boys throwing darts

Sorry for the delay..
Last night I was way to tired to even think about blogging!! So, I'll catch you all up on what we did yesterday.

We were supposed to go climb the Great Wall in the morning, but the rain prevented us from doing that. It started raining around 7 am, and didn't quit until after lunch. After breakfast, Hannah, Chelsea, Andy, Steven, Dad, Ian, Asher and I went over to the sports center in the hotel and played badmitton (spelling?) and ping pong. I'd never played badmitton before and after the first 20 minutes I was about to give up because I was doing so poorly. That's not surprising.. I'm not a very gifted athlete! But Chelsea was very patient with me and after I practiced a bit, we had a pretty good game going! (I'm used to playing tennis.. and badmitton is quite different!) Dad and Hannah played some great games of ping pong.. Hannah really gets into the game! We played for about an hour, but it got very hot in the sports center so we left and headed back to the hotel room.

Playing Ping Pong

Highlight of my day- we found Chinese Red Bull!!
However, it was way too sweet

Like they are usually doing, the boys played their game boys and Mom & I caught up on e-mail. We headed down for lunch and by the time we were finished, the rain had stopped.

The Great Wall was completely out of the question now, so we headed outside and walked on the bridge that you've seen in the pictures from my last post. The "Broken Bridge" is in the front and stretches halfway over the Yalu River, which seperates Mainland China from North Korea. It was bombed by the USA during World War II and never rebuilt. Since then, the Chinese reconstructed part of it and now it's a big tourist attraction.

In the background, you will see another bridge.. though I don't know the name of it. Only the Border Patrol is allowed to use it because it connects China to North Korea. There were a lot of people on the Broken Bridge, but we only saw maybe five people on the other one.

The weather was foggy, but nice and we really enjoyed our walk along the bridge. Asher enjoyed running around and saying "Hello" to everyone.

Compare the two cities.. here is Dandong

And here is North Korea
(the pictures are kind of foggy because it had been raining)

Asher being silly

North Korea

An amusement park ride in North Korea.. but we never saw it move the entire two days we were there.

The boys

Damage from when the U.S. bombed the bridge is still visible

And apparently, this was the bomb that took it out!

Monument at the beginning of the bridge

I love Chinese signs.. "Watch to collide your head."

Asher, with tone of the women from his orphanage

After our walk, we met up with a woman who works at Asher's orphanage. She was there on behalf of the orphanage, to take us on a boat ride on the Yalu River. Originally, we weren't going to go on the boat ride, but when we found out it was already payed for by the orphanage..we went. (It's very rude in China to refuse something from someone) The ride was nice and I'm glad we went! We pulled up close to North Korea and saw some of the life going on over there.

There was a huge difference between Dandong and North Korea. As you can see in the pictures, Dandong is a large bustling city with sky scrapers and many buildings. While across the river, there are few buildings and not much sign of life. We saw a few Korean people, but they were all very sad looking and didn't wave back at us. Even though these two countries are literally less than a mile apart, it was like two different worlds.

On the boat ride...

End of the broken bridge

To give you a glimpse of how close we were to North Korea..

After the boat ride, we went out for a walk and Mom bought a traditional Korean dress called a Hanbok for the little girls to share. We then headed back to the hotel and at least Mom, Dad and I fell asleep. (The boys played gameboy) Hannah came and got our sleeping butts out of bed around 6:30 for dinner. We ate at a traditional Korean restaurant just down the street from our hotel. It is owned and operated by North Koreans and we had a great time. The food was okay.. let's just put it that way! Most of it I didn't even recognize, but they served us a pretty good beef dish and another good one called seafood pie, which was actually like a quiche. And then they brought out the much anticipated kimchi! Our good friends lived in South Korea last year and told us many stories of the wonderful kimchi they experienced! I had to try it out for myself, and it wasn't too bad. Tasted like garlic.. lots and lots of it!!

As part of the dinner experience, the Korean women put on a karaoke type performance where they sung and danced. They called up several people from the audience, including me!!! As much as I didn't want to, I was dragged up there and made to start dancing with the Koreans! Fortunately, Hannah also came with me, so it wasn't too bad. I figured why not make a fool of myself since I'm in a foreign country and I'll never see these people again! Don't worry.. those pictures will never make it to the blog!! =)

After dinner, we were all exhausted and came back to the hotel and headed straight to bed! I called home on the panda phone and got to talk to Esther, Emma and Aunt Nanette. The kids are doing well.. we miss them a lot! Asher got to talk on the phone with his sisters and he and Esther even sung "Mama Hao" together. I got video, so I'll be sure to add that later today!

It's now Sunday here in China and I'm starting to get caught up on posting. The past two days have been a lot of fun, but very tiring! Today we have a free day so we're going to rest up and maybe go to Walmart again.