Jay signed in as Colleen. See below for more on this story but check Dad's look of concern. We didn't know where these guys were taking us. Turned out, they took us for a ride.

Our first night in Beijing, hungry and craving Peking duck, we got ripped off. These rickshaws were waiting just outside our cab who very knowingly dropped us off a block away from the duck restaurant and into the hands of the shady rickshaw driving scammers. They drove us around for about 10 or 15 minutes in all different directions before they dropped us off on the backside of the duck restaurant. When we were driving around we kept thinking, how would we have ever found this place without these guys....Then when we arrived and they insisted we pay more than our dinner for four was about to cost we knew something was fishy.

Luckily the duck was delicious and we had just enough money between the four of us to pay for dinner without having to wash any dishes.

Our duck.

The hike up to the Great Wall was steep and the path lined with vendors selling everything from t-shirts to knock off Yu Min Jun paintings.

We were happy to take the tram the rest of the way up.

As you can see it was hot. On the right is our tour guide Emily, she was really great.

The Great Wall is truly amazing. It's scale is magnificent and the amount of labor that went into this 500 meter structure are unreal. The original wall was started over 2000 years ago

Barry goes off on a trek.

Lee and Barry decided that they want one of these cars to cruise around Escondido. I hope you guys can find one in So Cal.

At the Summer Palace there were a lot of rules to follow. Luckily without even trying we were pretty sure we did not brake any of them.

There are beautiful paintings of scenes from all over China painted along the "Long Corridor" that makes its way through the gardens along side the man made lake Kunming. This palace was used by Chinese royalty during the summer months when the Forbidden Palace and it's 9000 rooms were just too hot. The last Chinese Dynasty was the Qing, they ruled from 1644 to 1911. After seeing the opulence of the palaces it is easy to understand why they lost power.

This was one of the largest rock sculptures we saw. I love rock sculptures.

This building was built by one of the last rules in China, actually she was the mother of the last ruler, but she was the one who wielded all of the power. Her name was Empress Dowager Cixi and she oversaw the construction of this building to be used for her birthday parties.

This is Jay signed in as Colleen. And the next post too. We saw some Chinese acrobats. They were frikkin' awesome.

This photo shows the scale of the Forbidden Palace. It is enormous and it goes on and on like this with 800 buildings and 9,000 rooms in all. Even more amazing to think that the Chinese built this 400 years ago. The physical presence of gates like this one was like a giant struggling to stand and shrug off the earthly shackles from which it emerged. This is also analogous to China today. On Beijing's streets, there was a palpable sense of excitement and enthusiasm for the near-future, more acute now probably because of the Olympics to be held there next year. People are rushing all over the place enjoying new freedoms from recent economic enrichment. I hope China's rise remains peaceful.

This is Jay signed in as Colleen blogging her photos. Here are some from the Forbidden Palace in the middle of Beijing.
For James Dayhoff.

Jay and I on Ghost Street where we tried Chinese Hot Pot. Ordering was a little tricky at this restaurant since we did not really know what kind of food it was. We chose the restaurant because it was really crowded so we thought the food would be good and luckily we were right. Although before and even after we ordered we had no idea what exactly we were going to end up eating.

Lee and Barry were great sports in trying all of the spicy sauces that we ordered. In the middle of the table there were three different boiling sauces to cook all the meats, tofu, and vegetables. This was Jay's favorite meal in China.

Our last day in Beijing Jay and I visited the Art Beijing 2007, art fair. It was great to see so many Chinese Contemporary artists all in one place. And to learn about galleries that we hope to visit on future trips to Beijing.

Our first night in Tibet we ate yak, and I yacked. This will be the only yak joke I will make in this section about Tibet, although you can't even imagine the temptation.

Well wishers leave their white scarves to pay homage to the Buddha. Unfortunately the scarves kind of look like someone T.P.ed the area.

Jay follows the hand.

Most buildings in Tibet have prayer flags flying over them. The Buddhists believe that every time the wind blows the flags make a prayer. Every new year the flags are changed with vibrantly colored new flags.

The Dali Lama's Summer Palace.

Potala Palace, the winter home for the Dali Lama, before he was exiled to India in 1959.

The original palace was built beginning in the 7th century and finished in the 16th century or so. It is big, old, and beautiful and smells like yak butter, which is burnt in all of the temples, palaces, and monasteries. Buddhist pilgrims bring yak butter as a donation to be burned to keep the temples lit and smelling like yak.

These ladies dressed in traditional Tibetan clothing are related to our tour guides girlfriend. The family was visiting Lhasa on a pilgrimage to the temples.

At Sera Monastery we saw Monks debating. A senior monk would ask a question and clap his hands and point if the answer was wrong.

Some of the monks were very aware that they were being photographed while others seemed more involved in getting the questions right. You might think the monks were being exploited for tourism, but considering we paid to watch these guys "debate" maybe we were the ones being exploited. Either way we were very happy to see them and it made Buddhism seem much more alive after wandering through temples full of tourists rich with the smell of Yak butter.

When in Tibet...pay the Chinese for silly photos in front of Potala Palace.

Tibet is obsessed with the Yak. In Tibetan Buddhism it is believed that it is best to kill the least number of animals that can feed the largest number of people. This is why they don't eat shrimp or other sea food (Tibet is also located very far from the ocean.) So the Yak is king in Tibet and just about everything they eat there comes from a Yak.

This is Yak butter which is used in all kinds of cooking and also in Yak butter tea which is drunk by Tibetans every morning. To make Yak butter tea you mix black tea, salt, and of course Yak butter. Both Jay and I tried Yak butter tea and once was enough for both of us.

This is Yak cheese, which is a very very dry cheese. Our tour guide gave us a small piece and said that people usually chew on it for three or four days........I was not interested in eating anything for that long and spit mine out. The flavor....hmmmm kind of like Yak and a chunk of powdered milk that had been drying in the sun for a week.

And here finally is Yak meet. These stands are all over the roads in Lhasa. Jay had a few Yak burgers and thought they were pretty tasty although a bit overcooked.

One more today so I can show Dad how easy it is to blog. Here we are at the Great Wall.

The first entry from our trip to China and Tibet. Ma and Pa are still here so will not finish a complete blog of our trip for a few more days but don't want to leave Katie hanging. Especially since she blogs long and hard just like every single day. I wonder if she still takes care of Dave and Eth. So here's Dad and his new friend and Mom looking a little suspicious on our first day in Beijing.

This Labor Day weekend we went to one of Korea's national parks. It is located at Geoje Island, which you can find at www.flashearth.com if you type in Geoje, South Korea. Geoje is at the far southeast of Korea and is the second largest island in this nation with thousands of islands. It was stormy and rainy the first day but cleared up the second. I rode my bike for about 3 hours in the morning around a small part of the island then we drove around and took some photos.
Korea's military hero, Admiral Yi, defeated a much larger fleet of Japanese warships in these islands in 1597. We spied a Japanese island for a moment just past these but it quickly faded back into the sea haze.
We read in the paper sometimes that Korea wants to increase tourism. One way we thought would be to increase adventure touring in this island group by promoting sea kayaking and camping in the bays and inlets around the Geoje archipelago.
We took a dip at this deserted Korean beach late in the day before heading back to urbanity and all its modern trappings. It was a great trip, possibly due in large part to the fact that school was back in session. Yay, school!

Here are a couple of shots of terraced rice paddies. They were all over the island and in nearly all the mountain valleys we drove through. Wikipedia, the source of all 21st century knowledge, states that rice is very water tolerant but that the reason it is grown in paddies is to drown weeds that would otherwise compete with it.
Here is a close up of rice. Probably pretty close to harvest but we don't know how close.

While Colleen was going to parties in California and Washington, I was going camping. Well, not exactly the same kind of camping one might think of by using that word but they still call it "going to the field". About 120 soldiers from the hospital went down to Camp Humphreys, south of Seoul, and spent a week setting up, operating, and tearing down a tent hospital. It was hard labor putting these things up and down but pretty fun. Group suffering always seems to be more fun.
We operated a real Emergency Room down there and saw a few patients. CPT Tom Zickgraf shows his healing hands.
We also did real operations. MAJ Robert Lim guards the pre-op entry from undressed visitors. I was leading a tour of the hospital for the 18th MEDCOM Commander when a "real world CODE BLUE in the ICW" was called. I turned and ran straight to it but luckily the patient had just fainted when he woke up from the anesthesia and saw his vasectomy scar. Phee-ew. No real code blue after all, but it was good drill for the Commander to see how ready we were to do real medicine in tents. This would be the plan and we would be the main support effort if we ever transitioned to hostilities in Korea.