Category: China

Today we got up early and drove to the town of Windsor to visit the castle there. Thankfully we got in line early enough that we were able to miss the wait. Once in line, my dad called from Paris. He and Pam were about to board their flight at the end of the trip they took there to celebrate their anniversary. Anyway, once inside, we got these devices with headphones that gave us an audio tour as we walked around the different areas of the castle. There were three main areas that we were able to see: The Queen’s Doll House, The Staterooms, and Saint George’s Chapel.

The Queen’s Doll House was specifically as a showcase for the queen’s dolls. They weren’t played with but the room was intended to showcase the best of British clothes, designs, etc. Supposedly the plates are made of pure silver. Why? Best they were rich. 🙂

The staterooms are where the current royalty would conduct their official business with other heads of state and leaders. My favorite area was this giant dining area called Saint George’s Hall.

St George’s Chapel was of Gothic-era architecture and it was really cool to see in person what that style was like. There was bunch of memorials inside the chapel for royalty that had passed away.

After that, we drove to Cliveden Garden just northwest of Windsor. I had gone here previously on my mission when I was serving in High Wycombe. It is was fun to go back there and show it to Angela. I think she enjoyed the pretty flowers that were there. They also had the nicest toilets that I had been to in the country. 🙂 The weather there went from rain to clouds to some sun to heavier rain.

Then we headed the Hellfire Caves in the west part of High Wycombe. These caves were dug for chalk to help build a road, and secret society called the Hellfire club met there. It was a bit chintzy but fun to go through them again.

After that we headed to the high street to show Angela where I lived and the area we could contact people. Most of the shops were closing up, so there weren’t the many people around, but Iceland was open and I bought a 2 pack of Scotch Eggs for Ang to try! After that, we walked around some more, went bowling, ate a disappointing kebab (not that warm), and headed home.

Overall, the day was good. My favorite part was taking some photos that were very close to same ones that I had taken while serving in High Wycombe. Good fun!

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Our flight to England was great! George Romo took us to the airport and luckily it was just Lee and I in our row so we had extra room. Lucky us! Once we landed in England we picked up our rental car (Vauxhall Astra) and drove to Runnymede.

There we saw the Magna Carta Monument, which was basically a bunch of pillars surrounding a stone saying that the Magna Carta was written there. I thought it was incredible to think about how the Magna Carta influenced so many other things in history – the constitution of the United State, which led to forming a great nation where the restoration could take place. Incredible!

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Then we drove to High Wycombe and met the Holts who are both so sweet and thoughtful. They let us try Pear Soda?…. Which tasted great! They are letting us stay with them for a few nights.

Tonight we went to a talent show of the High Wycombe ward. Lee was able to talk to a bunch of members who remembered him and it was fun to watch all their different talents. We ate dinner (jacket potatoes, which are just oven-cooked taters) with the ward at the talent show, which ended up lasting till nearly 10pm so we are both exhausted but happy. 🙂 (Post by Angela)

 

 

So we are starting this blog up now that we have been married for six months, and we just got a new laptop. No more excuses, so here it goes! But first, a little matter of business: we likely just do samlly updates about previous six months, rather than long, detailed posts. The main goal is to actually get the blog going with timely update; something that is hard to accomplish when you are trying to play catch up.

So this past week, I (Lee) wanting to do something special for my wife, Angela, so I arranged for us to go a Honduran restaurant and to the Chill at the Queen Mary in Long Beach (I will explain that later). I personally love doing fun surprises for Angela, so I arranged all of this without telling her a word. And, of course, that involved me tooting my own horn about how special her surprise was going to be. That’s how I roll. 🙂

The first part of our special date night was to going to a restaurant named Honduras Kitchen for, you guessed it, Honduran food. This is where Angela served her mission before we got married, so I figured it would be fun to experience some of the food she loved while there.

The meal started off with banana soda. You see, this was a drink that Angela has been dying for me try ever since she has been home. It takes exactly like a banana Laffy Taffy in drink form. That really is the best way to describe. After that, we got some appetizers and our main dishes. I had a steak and egg meal with some yummy rice, creama, and fried plantains. Angela has some fried chicken dish I can’t remember the name of. She said it tasted just like Honduras, so mission accomplished, I’d say.

 

After that, we went to the Chill at the Queen Mary. This place is a old, early 1900s cruise ship now moored in Long Beach and is currently a large hotel and museum. The Chill exhibit is set up just outside of the shipped and is themed like a old Christmas village. There they have some performance stages, a swing ride, and an ice skating rink, among other things. Adjacent to that area, there is a large dome area that houses a sledding hill and another building with a bunch of ice sculptures inside.

The sledding hill is two stories tall and about a 100 feet long, so not super impressive for us, but for SoCal where we get no snow, it was pretty fun. Since we went on a Wednesday and there weren’t a lot of people there, we were about to go on the slide several times. Whenever you’re tired of that, you can go inside another temporary building they set up inside the dome (yes, a building inside a building 😛 ). Inside it is about 0 degrees, so they give you this big parka before you enter (all the Californians would freeze if they didn’t).

Once inside, there are a bunch of ice sculptures designed to the theme of The Night Before Christmas. Just take a look on the photos – everything you see in there is made of ice, including the walls! It was incredible! We were told that a team from small village in China come here each year at the beginning of November and make everything inside in about 20 days. The colored ice you see? It is water dyed that color before it was frozen. The pictures give it the most justice, so make sure to take a look.

To finish the night, we walked around the Queen Mary ship and went to their Polar Express 4D movie. The fourth dimension stuff in this 15-minute adaption of the full-length film included things like water, wind, snow, and even the smell of hot chocolate. While it was pretty expensive, it was a wonderful and memorable evening nonetheless.

 

 

 

As I was trying to think of the perfect intro to this blog I figured I would list the number of times that I have used my smart phone or check Facebook. Reality is that it is a big enough number that I can’t think of what it is. And I suppose that each of those times I was wishing I wasn’t really using them.

All of this led me to wonder what a life of digital-less-ness would be like. I picture it as this: I sell my smart phone and downgrade my plan to simple dumbphone plan with 500 text messages a month. It would also involve deleting my Facebook profile. Now on to the consequences of both…

Dumping the phone:

I suppose that this one wouldn’t be too bad. The main thing that I use it for is Google Maps, which has been an life-saver in more than one instance but I suppose that a real map would work and I could even bust out my old GPS unit if need be.  A lot of the other things that I use if for could be done on my laptop. The biggest thing of getting rid of it is the convenience factor as I have really starting using my laptop considerably less since I have owned my laptop.

Continue reading “Digital suicide?”

So this past week I went to the Western Idaho Fair with my mom. The thing that I love the most about the fair is just looking at all the fun displays. Well, this was one of them and it was an awesome duck biscuit.

Well, only one. You are no longer able to register on the blog. See the picture above for the reason.

So about a month ago I kept on getting emails saying that a new user had registered on my blog. Getting excited, I would look at the email and be absolutely stumped by an email address like encafeineprit@crufreevideo20123.cz.cc. Yeah, my thoughts exactly. By the time that I finally got around to taking care of this, 65 spam bots have registered on my website. Good to know that I am that popular. 🙂

On a side note, my laptop is back and I have a new phone. This evening I am going to be looking at ways that I can use the two in tandem to make my updates more steady. Here goes something…. I think.

So my last post was one saying that the update have NOT stopped. Well, it seems that the indeed have, sadly. Mostly because I am busy.

But it was a time full of memories and I am determined to finish them. I have about three weeks until I go back to school and that means that I have three weeks to finish this.

But there is one problem, my laptop is getting fixed right now so updates might be a bit difficult. Only time will tell. 🙂

Nah, they haven’t. Truth be told, I am home now and have been for about a week and a half. I am determined that I will finish what I start. So just because I am home don’t count me out. I will survive!

On other news, I got a temp job doing demolition work at the Boise, Idaho temple. That should be interesting…

As you might have noticed, my blog was pretty sparse while I was gone seeing the sights when I promised that would update more. Well, right now I am sitting in the Shanghai Pudong International Airport waiting for ticket counter to open. Jordan is showing this guy from Dubai how to do some magic tricks so with time to burn, I figured that I’d do an update with the adventures that we had in Xi’an. Pics will come in another post.

We were in Xi’an from Tuesday night until Friday night and we had a lot of fun. While we were in the hostel, there was a girl from Brazil (Joana) and a guy from Mauritius (Gary) that we sharing the room with. They were there together as friends and he had a lot of fun with them, especially because they spoke English. All the sights that we went to in Xi’an were with them so you will see their names mentioned in this post.

Day 1:

Army of Terracotta Warriors

This place was awesome! This place was the ancient burial site of the first emperor to unify China. To protect his burial site, he had thousands of terracotta soldiers made to protect him. This place was massive and they are still not finished digging all of them out. When we showed up at the place (which was about an hour out of town by bus) we were stopped by a lady who was offering us an English language tour for 40 RMB each and we said yes.

Having the tour guide there was a lot of help because we learned a lot that we normally would have because we don’t speak Chinese. Also, she took us to this really expensive jade shop that was INSIDE the jade shop. I don’t really understand jade and what makes it more expensive but there were pure jade statues only 10 inches high that were price at about 1 million US dollars. At a restaurant there we also had the infamous long noodle which is a wide 12 foot long noodle that that you dipped in this tomato type soup. That was good too.

Xi’an City Wall

The city of Xi’an used to be one of the ancient capitals of China so there are a lot of historically significant buildings around town and the city wall is one of them. They also say that they are the best preserved city walls in China and I have no reason to doubt them. The city wall measures 14 km in circumference and 12 meters in height and was a spectacle to behold.

The best part of it was that you could rent bicycles for super cheap and ride that whole length of the wall. Joana suggested that we do it that evening time. I was sure glad that we did because we ended up seeing some spectacular sunsets while on the wall. We then ended the hour and forty minute ride at night with the wall and the city lit up in different colors and even with ambiance music.

I would have to say the riding the city wall was probably one of my most memorable moments. My bicycle seat was broken so I am sure of that was a contributing memorable factor but it was just the uniqueness of it all.

Sure, the Great Wall of China was pretty spectacular but not that many can say that they biked an ancient city call. Also, my favorite thing was admiring the architecture of the building on the wall. It was simply amazing.

Alrighty, so I am in Korea, making my way back home.

Yawnn…. I am sleepy. For those with curious minds, I flight leaves here at 1am Monday, Korean time. It arrives in Los Angeles at 9 PM, Sunday evening. I suppose my mind is tired from trying to figure that one out. It just wants to sleep.

Anyway, China is now behind me and it is a little sad. 🙁

But I am getting excited for a Whopper. 🙂