I Got To It, And I Crossed It!

Breaking news: in three weeks, I'm being taken to 'China's Hawaii', an island located off the south coast of China called Hainan. Here's a picture:

I know, I was surprised too! It's a gift, and I'm extremely grateful for it. And excited! We stay for a week, and I return a few days before I leave for America. I won't know what to do with all that sunshine, but I'll be nice and rested for my trip back to the U.S.

Okay, a few more tidbits about my weekend trip:

We visited a place with one of those swing-y bridges:

I love bridges, but they also make me dizzy; when I was 15, I was hiking with my dad and fainted off the side of a foot bridge into a river. The little girls wanted to cross the bridge, so I sucked it up, grabbed their hands, and away we went. A large sign at the entrance says not to swing the bridge, but why get on a swingy bridge if you're not going to swing it? So of course, quite a few boys got on and started monkeying away. The little girls got frightened and squealed and grabbed my hands tighter, and I wanted to tell them, "Listen, I'm not the one to cling to here! I'm scared too!" And then I thought, is this what it's like to be a parent? Being scared, but knowing they're even more scared, so you just keep moving forward? That was my strategy, and it worked. We made it off alive! Hooray!

One of the neatest things we did was visit the JinSha Relic Site, near Chengdu. At JinSha, someone discovered pottery relics in the dirt, and as archeologists dug deeper, they uncovered a 3,000 year old village, complete with graveyards and ancient palace. My director's brother-in-law is an archeologist there (they are still uncovering relics), and he arranged for me to have a private tour of the site and museum with an English speaking guide. I LOVED this, it's now one of the highlights of my time in China. It was incredibly kind of them to arrange this for me. I learned that among the relics they found is this gold piece above, which has now been adopted as one of the Chinese icons of cultural heritage. The archeologists speculate that the four birds represent the four seasons, and the 12 sun rays are the 12 months of the lunar cycle. They sold gold replicas in the museum shop, but waaay out of my price range. But, I love this piece now, I want to buy a print for my home.

Last night I went and saw Avatar in 3D; after my experiences here of being a foreigner trying to integrate in a historically closed-off society, I think I saw it through different eyes than if I had seen it at home. Anyway, hence the delay posting about my trip. I'll finish up tomorrow.