One Word . . . HUMIDITY ! ! !

Well we all arrived safe and sound and most of us have contacted our loved ones back home. As I said in my last entry if there is anyone that needs to get a hold of a member here post a comment and I will get them the message.

Well it was a very nice day here in China. The weather was that of, for lack of a better word " Humidity Hell". The temperature was about 85 degree with about a Kabillion percent humidity. That's right I said a kabillion as it's a scientific term I picked up when I stayed in a Holiday Inn Express on time. We got to have a free day to explore Grand Epoch City where we are staying and where the hotel is located. The grounds are HUGE with a capital HU. the entire city is surrounded by what ca only be described as a mini great wall of China. Everyone here is very polite and very hard to communicate with (I know. . . What did we expect?). Joanie called the front desk last night and asked for a washcloth and finally after repeating it four times really slow they delivered two bathrobes. We got one hell of a laugh about that one. We walked all over the city and took picture of just about everything. It is very beautiful here and it seems that you walk about five feet and see something else that you need to take a picture of. There were about eight of us walking around together and I uploaded everyone's pictures from today alone, and the totaled right around one-thousand pictures. I have uploaded new pictures of both the farewell concert as well as our first day travels to Beijing. I will be uploading a few pictures every day but not every picture that we have. We will try and set up a killer slide show of our adventures when we get back, so everyone has a chance to see the thousands upon thousands of pictures that will be taken over the next couple of weeks. I can't stress enough about the humidity here. I honestly don't know how some of the people here in china walk around in Suit Jackets and Ties without passing out. I'm afraid I would have to find the job where you could be naked all day. This must be the reason that there aren't very many fat Chinese, they live in a Freakin' sauna! The food has been interesting to say the least. Their Idea of "Western" cuisine is a little different than ours. Okay lets not bullshit each other it's a lot different than ours. They had corn on the cob, which you would think you could mess up too bad. Well we fondly called it "Chinese Rubber Corn". You can probably guess why we call it that. The next interesting thing was the chicken. They need to warn a person that the little pieces of cut up chicken is like eating shards of glass. They cut the chicken up into little tiny pieces and leave the tiny bone shards in the meat. . . Surprise!!! They also seem to think we love bread with little tiny raisin in it because they serve it at every meal. Thank god that as a group we probably have more food than most of the Chinese Supermarkets. I did manage to find Chips A-Hoy chocolate cookies that hit the spot. Well the kids have their first practice at 8:00am in the morning tomorrow, or should I say today as it is 12:40am right now. They received their uniforms today and I am sure we all will be taking another thousand pictures tomorrow. Along with the thousand if Olympic Orchestra member that are here there is a Dutch contingent on a "Walk China Tour". They are apparently into walking and they plan on walking everywhere, even though it's "Humidity Hell". At any rate I am very tired and need some sleep for tomorrows activities so until then. . .Goodnight John Boy. . . Goodnight Maryellen. . .Goodnight Ma. . . And So On And So on And So On.