John's Photographs

This is a link to the Photographs of John Stephany, my roommate on my trip to China.

What a great guy!

http://picasaweb.google.com/john.stephany

"Lost Photos"

Ok, so I'm pretty excited! I lost (deleted) some of my photos from the very first days of the trip to China! Ugh...who knows how? I guess when I was cleaning up my laptop on the trip, they were deleted accidently!

Anyway, I kept looking for them, and could never find them on my computer with the other photographs! It was very disappointing! Then I ran across them on my picassa account, and they aren't the FULL size of the originals, but they are at least a good size...so...I've uploaded them to the second CHINA page. They are the FIRST 38 images on that page.

The ones I really wanted are the ones of our first morning in Shanghai, John and I walked around the block of our hotel, about 7am...and the city was coming to life! Loved it.
There were also photographs of the 400 year old TEA HOUSE that are part of this set.
(I think you can read all about that in the previous posts from July 5 in Shanghai).
(Click the picture to go to the page)

Photography Contest Finalist

I submitted a photograph from the trip to China, to a contest that the Tennessean newspaper was running, and it was selected (out of around 1200 photos I believe) as one of the top 20 finalists!

That's pretty exciting. It's nothing huge, just a local contest, but my first one I've been in since I started fooling around with photography. The winner wins like $100 or something.

I'm just pumped one of my photographs made it to the Top 20. =)

If you don't mind taking 10 seconds and going to the following link to vote for my photo...

I'm PHOTO #1

...so easy to find.... I sure would appreciate it.

Feel free to fwd this to others that wouldn't mind taking a moment to vote!

My photo is of The Sacred Way, in Beijing, China.

The day it was pouring down rain, and of course seems to have added to the total aura of the place.

Thanks!
Paul

http://travel.tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?Category=TENNESSEANTRAVEL9906

ALSO...for those who haven't seen my pictures for some reason....you can go to
http://www.photoworks.com/members/paulbeavers

Nashville Dragon Boat Festival

The opening ceremony was a CHINESE LION DANCE performed by the CHINESE ARTS ALLIANCE OF NASHVILLE. It was a mix of adults and children who have learned to perform the LION DANCE. It was very nice to see this performed down by the Cumberland River under the the shadow of the Titans stadium, and the Shelby Street Bridge.

Dragon Boat Festival is one of the most popular Chinese festivals which is traditionally celebrated on the 5th of the fifth month of the Chinese lunar calendar. The popular theory of the origin of the festival is that it was derived from the activities of commemorating a great patriot poet, Qu Yuan. Today the Dragon Boat Festival is celebrated all over the world and not necessarily together with the Double Fifth Day observance.

My pics

Beijing Olympics

Well, I've been able to finally get some work done on some of my other pictures from China.
Most of the pictures that I've posted prior to the last couple of weeks, were all edited and cleaned up while I was in China. So there were several hundred other pictures I haven't even really looked at all that closely since returning home, because school started back and I have been busy with getting that started.

I worked on some of the Beijing pictures tonight. There ended up being some pretty nice photographs of the Olympic venue...I was pretty happy with them (they were still working on these when we were there July 7 and 8), especially since I took all of them from the moving bus.

So click the picture here to go see some of the new uploaded pictures from the Forbidden City, and the Olympic Venue.

The Butterfly Song

So one of the stories I didn't get much of a chance to write about on here (because it was toward the end of the trip and things were moving TOO fast to put it on here) was our train ride back from the Wudang Mountains. I mentioned it, but I didn't get a chance to post the video and some pictures.

Trains were the best way to travel while in China. They are better than airplanes because you can actually lay down, stretch out and relax. The train back from our last weekend trip from Wuhan, was a highlight of the trip in many ways. We were all in 3 stacked bed quarters. Six people to each "cabin" (although it was an open cabin). It was about a 5 hour train ride if I remember correctly. The first part of the ride was spent sleeping and having a good nap after all the climbing we did.
We also had to CLIMB over the tracks at the station to get to our platform...dragging our luggage and treasures we had found along the way with us. It was one of those moments on the trip where I just stopped and remembered that we were in rural China and how awesome it all really was to be able to experience such a thing.

Once on our platform (crowded in with all the other passengers waiting for the train) the station security with large sticks started blowing their whistles and yelling (in Chinese) for everyone to get behind a red line on the platform (so they wouldn't be smashed by the train). They didn't have smiles on their faces, and with the yelling and sticks/clubs...I made sure I was completely behind the line! Once on the platform, there was probably no more than a 10 minute wait...probably more like a 6 minute wait...for the train to arrive. As soon as it did everyone quickly jumped on dragging all their things with them.

We settled in and napped for awhile. Then John and Sharon, who were in the next cabin met a sweet family. One of the little girls...probably around 4 years old, kept climbing up the ladder to John's bunk to get a peek of him. After some time I went over and hung out with them and was showing the two girls and their mom some of the photographs I had taken on this leg of the trip.
One of the pictures was a butterfly (see posted here). The mom of one of the girls (the one in white) had the two sing a song about butterflies.

Here it is!

Second Set of China Pics

I've started working on the second wave of photographs from China.
Click HERE to see them.

Great Wall of China VIDEO

I took some time today to work on some of my videos from the trip.

This is a clip from our climb up the GREAT WALL OF CHINA.

It was something else! I'll let the video speak for itself!

Lots of HUFFIN' and PUFFIN'!

Jet Lag & O'Hare

Two things that aren't fun.

Our flight back from China on American Airlines, no problem. We travelled all over China...flying, trains, boats...wild taxi rides...etc. Some of it was pretty crazy, we even were harassed a bit because of the missile incident...but the worst travel experience of the whole trip had to be at O'Hare airport in Chicago.

Not only did we miss our flight because the plane we had been on for 14 hours had to sit another 15 minutes on the runway before it was given the okay from O'Hare to go to a gate...we had to go through security at least 3 more times once in the airport (that's not counting the two parts of Customs we had to go through). It was bad, and we were sick of it by the time we made it to our SECOND GATE where we had to wait for our later flight that got us home an hour late...that's not that much time, unless you've been in China for a month!!!! Anyway O'Hare sux!

I also have really bad jet lag. I stayed up for 25 hours straight and was already a little sick from the trip...(which I still have a little of) and the no sleep didn't help. So jet lag has been rough. I stayed up yesterday trying to correct it, went and saw The Dark Knight in IMAX and that woke me up a bit...got my haircut (almost fell out of the chair)...oh and the guy next to me heard me talking to the guy cutting my hair about being in China...and asked me about it because he leaves to go there at the end of the month...my advice was take PLENTY OF TOILET PAPER.

So I got home around 4pm yesterday and crashed. I woke up around 9pm...stayed up until around midnight and took two AMBIEN. They worked. Knocked me out and I didn't wake up once until around 9am this morning. So I think by the time of bed tonight I'll take another Ambien and be ready to go and caught up on the sleep! Which is good...because tomorrow is my first day back to school.

Keeping in Touch

Here is a WONDERFUL email from one of our hosts at Hubei University, Minnie! She was in charge of keeping us on task and on schedule and we loved her for it! What a wonderful wonderful host, just like all of China!
Dear All,

Greetings from Minnie at Hubei University. Hope you all had a pleasant flight.

It was so hard to say goodbye at the airport, but it was very nice to share laugh, tear and memory. Three weeks of time is only a flash in one's life, but it will keep in my mind forever. Your strong desire to learn about our Chinese history and culture, your enthusiasm and sincerity in experiencing the different culture, and your kindness and generosity to our students and staff have left us a deep impression. I thank you all so much for your coming to Hubei and for being with us in this hot but special summer. We wish we could see yo again in China sometime in the near future.

To keep contact and share the pictures, I signed up for this Gmail. The username is -------, the password is ----------. The student helpers have created a group of Fulbright Teachers that you can find and edit your information. And we will upload in couple of days the pictures we took in this three weeks to the Photo Album which you can find in the right head of the website. Also, it will be much appreciated if you could upload the pictures you took, so that we can share the happiness.

Take care and keep contact.

Best regards.

Minnie