China Trip

"The oxen are slow, but the earth is patient."

So, my trip to China was kind of rough. We missed our connection in Beijing, and the next flight we could get on was at 8pm the next day! So, we tried to catch the late train to Changchun, but we missed that by about 10 minutes. We ended up staying in a hotel in Beijing, then we caught the early train to Changchun the next morning.

(Beijing airport. Apparently it was finished for the Olympics, so everything was nice and new.)

The train was nice, but it was a really long trip... about 6 hours, and this was a high-speed train!

(Various sights from the train ride. In this last picture, you can see the tall, relatively new, apartment buildings that seem to be everywhere in China.)

I had a runny nose and sore throat almost the whole trip. I'm not sure if it was from the little cold I had the week before or from the air pollution. My guess is the pollution, but I don't know for sure. Some days seemed OK, but I really noticed it on other days.

(Huge shopping mall in Changchun. There was a large section of the mall devoted to stores that only sold doors...)

(Weaving loom picture for Mom...)

(Changchun from my hotel room window. Yes, the window was a little dirty, but there is also some pretty significant smog in the air.)

You definitely noticed the cold too... the worst during the day was -18F, but it got colder at night (-28F)! I was worried that the buildings would all be cold, but, if anything, they were too hot! Still, I was glad that I brought all the cold-weather gear that I did.

(Below-ground Chinese market in Changchun.)

(Mom's mittens did the trick for keeping my hands warm.)

(This guy's rickshaw was loaded up with cardboard, which he was likely taking to a recycling center to sell.)

The trip home went much more smoothly than the trip there. My layovers were all fairly long, so there wasn't much pressure to move quickly through the airport.

(First class lounge at the Beijing airport... Nice!)