I woke up laughing on Thursday morning, but feeling a little bit tense at the same time. I was remembering the dream that I had just had--one which I found very telling of my emotional/mental state right now. I had a dream that we were with our group of western friends here in Tianjin (the same ones we were planning to go out of town with that morning for a weekend getaway to a nearby village) and were on a boat. One of the women with our group got motion sickness, so the boat driver decided to pull over at dock at a nearby village. We all disembarked and found a HUGE Super Target awaiting us! We had 5 minutes to run through the store and make whatever purchases we deemed most important before the boat departed to continue on our journey. I awakened before hitting the check-out line, but remember passing by the aisles with pet reptiles (frogs in particular; I'm assuming this portion of my dream was linked to the reptile section of the animal selling part of town we had taken my mom to earlier that week here in Tianjin) and decorative vases as I tried to determine what was top priority! I suppose I'm thinking of our return trip to the States in December more than I realize!
We left town (by van, rather than boat) on Thursday morning after breakfast and drove about two and a half hours into the mountains west of Tianjin. We arrived in an 800-person village (called Ji Xian) to our accommodations for the weekend--a bed and breakfast-like place at which our group had reservations, thanks to one of the families having stayed there on a previous trip. We had the entire second level rented out to our group, since there were about 22 of us that had come together (and one dog). Our family had three rooms; one for the kids, one for Kevin and me, and one for my mom. When we first arrived, I immediately thought, "Hey, this place is great. This reminds me a lot of some place we would stay at in Colorado during a family vacation." Once I said these words aloud, however, I realized the humor and irony in what I was saying! Yes, we had three rooms (which is a lot, technically), but the rooms were each barely large enough to have enough floor space to include a bed or two and then a small walking path between them. Yes, we had three bathrooms, but none of them included a toilet (only squatty potties) or a "real" shower or bath (only a shower head right next to the squatty potty). Yes, we had enough beds for everyone, but the mattresses were so hard, that we all ended up piling up anything extra that was soft that we could find to pad under our hip bones (for those of us who are side sleepers). Yes, we had a beautiful view off of our balcony to see the mountains when the haze wasn't too thick, but the gap between the bars was large enough for a 16-month old to easily slip through and plummet to the ground two floors below. And yes, there was bedding for the beds, but there were no towels or even toilet paper provided (luckily, I wondered if this would be the case and therefore brought my own from home!). So our place DID end up being great (and cost the equivalent of about $15 per night per adult, kids free, and cost including 3 meals a day--all Chinese food, meaning mainly stir-fried veggies and rice!), but my initial assessment of being similar to Stateside accommodations was probably a bit premature!!
In spite of a few "accommodation obstacles", we had an absolute BLAST these last three days, and decided we would return to the same spot (and same bed and breakfast!) again in a heartbeat. We hiked the Great Wall for several hours on Thursday, with only one minor tumble by Eli that was remedied by a band-aid and some Neosporin (the Wall is a LOT steeper than I had ever imagined, having really steep inclines and declines that have stairs at some points and not at others; also, the Wall is a little bit on the old side, so it is quite uneven footing! These elements make for more treacherous climbing than you would envision when thinking of a hike through mountain paths.) Kevin had Hudson on his back and I had Noah on mine, so we both got an extra quad work-out in for the afternoon! We crashed early that evening after our kids and their friends (another family with us who are dear friends also have four kids, ages 15 down to 10, who our kids LOVE and even babysit for us some times to have a date night) did a lip sync performance to different music (Veggie Tales, "Where is My Hairbrush?" by the Joseph clan)--complete with sock puppets that the other kids had helped ours design and color. On Friday we went to a site that was about a 10-minute walk away that the Tianjin International School owns, and at which we had gotten permission to hang out. They have built a huge ropes course there, and the site has a large area of grass (with no police present to tell you to get off of!) as well as other team-building activity dynamics (like a really large see-saw that multiple people can get on at once, a cowboy golf course, a rock-climbing wall, and lots of rocks just the right size for my boys to collect and throw)! We spent the morning there playing with our friends and then went horseback riding and picking apples at a nearby orchard in the afternoon. The kids had a movie night that evening before bedtime while the group of adults had some meaningful fellowship time together. Talk about sweet friendships and fun memories being made! And to have my mom with us for it all was even more significant, as she has really gotten to know some of our dear friends here and built friendships with them on her own. We were so thankful to have such a refreshing weekend out of the city, playing in the "clean" dirt of the village, speaking lots of English with our friends and watching our kids have the time of their lives playing with their friends in such a beautiful spot in nature. Oh, but we must admit that we did all enjoy the hot showers, sit-down toilets, and soft beds we returned home to last night!
I unfortunately had to escort my mom to the Beijing airport this morning for her to catch a noon flight back to Dallas. The tears flowed, but not nearly as much as usual with our upcoming Christmas reunion just around the corner! And after a WONDERFUL 10 days of having her here, I am feeling refreshed and encouraged, ready to tackle my Chinese studies (that have been slightly put on hold during our week-long holiday!) and get back in the swing of things in our new normal. Oh, and I did have a funny realization this weekend. I have been gearing up for the cold weather to set in, but was thinking we only had another week before our heat was turned on. Not so! I was off by a whole month! The heat comes on NOVEMBER 15 rather that October 15--so bring it on! I'm thinking I really do need to pull out the long undies and fleece pj's!!
