Sunday, March 9, 2014

Dim Sum Deliciousness


You know what's great about traveling in Asia, delicious dim sum for breakfast! Soup dumplings, red bean dumplings, green onion dumplings, spinach and mushroom dumplings all delightful. And then right next to the dim sum station was baked beans, french toast, honey ham and a salad bar. Gotta love international breakfast.

Things also sited today:
- Several KFCs, a Diary Queen, a Baskin Robins, McCafe's, Pizza Hut, Domino's, etc...apparently fast food is a great American export
- Giant picture of Chairman Mao hanging in front of the Forbidden City
- The largest jade carving in China which took 6 years to complete
- Crowd of Asian tourists looking at jade rings and no one looking at the large diamonds in platinum ring
- Dragons. Lots of dragon 
- Panda hats: Go Giants! 
- A live show produced by the same guy who created the Open Ceremonies for the Olympics. There were many highlights but the most surprising was when the women came out dancing with live peacocks tied to their hats!

Friday, March 7, 2014

Have Passport. Will travel

At the beginning of this week I started a new job. It's awesome and I'm so excited to work on something new. And, now I'm going on vacation. Yeah, life is funny and unpredictable. I'm mostly okay with that but my planner-side got to work on the flexibility skills.

But who cares? I've got my passport and tickets to China. This adventure is not starting as I planned.  It probably won't even go as planned.  But it's bound to be full of once in a lifetime memories and stories to tell long after the stress has faded.  So, cheers to a great job when I return.  Hooray for realizing the flight was leaving at 12pm, not 11pm, in enough time for me to pack. Grateful being able to finish the typhoid pills without too much drama.  And so THANKFUL that my VISA application only got rejected once!

I will see the Great Wall. I will stand in the shadow of Emperors from long ago. I will try really hard not to get typhoid. And I will eat whatever looks delicious, even if the travel nurse advised against it.  This is my vacation and it's going to be amazing!