Plans Are Meant To Be Changed

I was supposed to be home tonight.

It wasnt supposed to be....

Morning plans go awry and turn until next day plans which will leave me rushing to get home to catch a flight to take me to the east coast to keep my mid week plans.

But for the time being, I'm here in frigid MN for yet another night and so here I sit at my best friends daughters band concert.  If I just stayed for this - it was worth it!?...

GUESS WHAT?!

http://storiesfromasnapshot.wordpress.com

Do you all remember this?  My creatively fun Wordpress blog,  Stories From A Snapshot?!  Its a 10 sentence story based on one of my travel picts!

I'm working a late Saturday evening in Minneapolis and my working consists of waiting and so I'm bored and I happened to open Stories up and decided that I wanted to write again! :)  This picture is from Greece, outside of Thessaloniki.  A cool, beautiful day on the beach!

We'll see if I start regularly writing again?  It is kind of fun!

The Forbidden City - At Long Last!

It was a request that I post pictures of the Forbidden City.  I actually never posted anything from when I worked in China as for some reason the picts wouldn't upload.  So without further ado - I'm posting picts of Tieneman Square, The Forbidden City and The Olympic Park in Beijing!

TIENEMEN SQUARE - IT SAYS "WELCOME TO CHINA!  WE'RE GLAD YOU'RE HERE!  LOL!" in the Chinese letters :)  That was what my translator told me and I have no reason to believe that she would be lying! :)

The Forbidden City.  It was HUGE.  We kept on walking into one massive new section after another.  The king's office, the king's temple, the king's sleeping chambers.... Ah - we walked and walked and walked - it took about an hour and a half to walk through the whole thing and we didn't really stop that much or that long!  Its incredible to think that they still used it up until the 1960s or so.  No, its just full of tourists, most of them Asian and many of them who stop a westerner and ask if they can have their picture taken with her :)  Weird, right? :)

The Olympic Torches at the Olympic Park

In front of the main sports stadium

The Olympic Stadium, aka "The Bird's Nest"

The Olympic pool

And this is where I worked - the PLA # 306 :)  Its the Peoples Liberation Army Hospital # 306.  A military hospital in downtown Beijing.

This is the director of the department we worked in.  She's like a 4 start colonel in the Chinese army, one of three in the whole country so it was apparently a great honor for me to meet her, from what I was told!  She was actually extremely kind and gracious so it was a pleasure working with her!

It's Freezing?!!

I'm just coming back to Minneapolis from Phoenix this morning.  I've been in AZ since Thursday and, relatively speaking - it was freezing!!!:). The evenings were like 50 which in desert speak is pretty dog gone chilly.  

Friday afternoon I hiked good old Camelback, Cholla Trail, with my good friend Kim who came out on a whim.  It was 50s but the sun was out so it was good.  We got to the top and the day was clear and bright and there was even a Christmas tree to welcome us!

 And now I'm headed back to -8 in the chilly Cities and a weekend of working......:( I have a pump install I'm doing at an account there and then I have to stay over for Monday to finish up at another account.

But, I enjoyed two days in the "freezing" southwest of AZ!

Stark Contrasts!

I've started the week in Minneapolis and now I'm headed to Phoenix (from MN)... And here's the great part ...

That's it --- I'm headed to Phoenix.... From this....

Great Wall Day!

I never posted any Picts before - just trying to catch up on work let alone life:)

Sunday when I was in Beijing, we left at 7 in the morning to drive to the Great Wall. My friends had been praying that we'd have a clear day and that morning when we woke up they were so excited because since they'd been in China, they hadnt seen a day that clear.

Turned out to be a good thing we left so early as when we got there there were very few people at the wall, by the time we started leaving it was actually getting packed!

When we left, instead of doing the cable car down, we took this luge like thing.  It was like Cool Runnings but with a little brake stick.  Took us about 10 minutes to zip down the slide and it was a cold windy ride down, but much more fun than I had anticipated!

Sad Dog

I'm gone the entire week this week... Literally Sunday - Sunday!  Possibly even until Monday.  Calvin knew it and so decided to look as pitiful as possibly by nesting on everything I was packing.  So sad....

I'm in Minneapolis the beginning of the week, flying from MN to Phoenix on Wednesday night and then back to Minneapolis on Saturday morning to work the weekend.  Wah!  At least I get two warm days in AZ as a perk - but I was looking and it drops from 70s to 50s the days I'm there.  I guess it's better than 20s?!