First Impressions

We've arrived back in the land of the free and the home of the hamburger about 6 hours ago and are all struggling to stay awake. Our goal is to not go to sleep until 8pm so as to minimize the adjustment time. Our flights were Looooooonnnnnngg, but now that I'm looking back these past two years have just flown by. Is it really possible that our amazing Olmsted experience has come to an end? But, I digress. I have reached that foggy, muddled state of mind that happens when your body has no idea what time it is. So our first impressions of our homeland...

• no one honks their horn
• people stand in line
• there is no garbage, anywhere
• everything is clean, we joked about kissing the airport floor - and it didn't even seem like a gross idea
• Drinking from the tap is a great concept
• Driving in the lanes is also a good idea
• There are a lot of restaurants in America
• Chicago is a beautiful city

And, I've already lived my dream of wandering the grocery store aisles. Z, my mom and I went to grab a few things for dinner. I was surprised at how quickly I became overwhelmed by everything - the selection, the prices, the mass quantities. Z was disappointed that I wasn't buying everything he wanted, but I was so overwhelmed that I almost couldn't function. Weird! I am happy to report, though, that I still love milk as much as I imagined I did. But, now my brain is slowly shutting down, and I am rapidly approaching a mildly vegetative state, so I will refrain from sharing anymore at present. America IS beautiful! I am elated to rediscover all the things that make her great!

Going Out In Style

Elephant pick-up at the Hyatt

Today was the last day of school at AES for the kids, a surprisingly sad day for all of them.  Saying goodbye is never easy, and it seems to get more difficult as time passes and they get older and develop deeper and more meaningful friendships.  However, we started the day off bright and early with a memorable last ride to school - on Elephant back.  We met Raja, our hathi, outside the Hyatt this morning at 6:15 am and began the ride to school which lasted about 1 hour and 15 minutes.   Dave walked alongside the elephant with the camera the whole time capturing this last adventure, while I drove along behind in the car with Devender and their backpacks.  Almost halfway there, I got a text from A:  "my shoe is falling off.  D's legs are itchy.  Are we halfway there yet?"  This warranted an actual phone call response:  "I'll pick up your shoe if it falls, tell D to sit criss-cross, and I hope you are appreciating every moment of this."  Arrival at the school was less than climactic, but very fitting as the school security guard almost had an aynurism that we didn't have a 'permit' to have the elephant near the gate, and that we were taking photos.  So, we 'parked' further down the street to have the kids disembark.  It was an awesome last day arrival aboard the school-hathi.

Hathi on Ring Road

Are we there yet?

The End... of a great two years

Testing... testing... 1... 2... 3...

Hello?  Is anyone there?  Okay, I know we've been AWOL from here for almost a year, but that's all about to change.  The McIllece Family Home website will be packed up with our computer this week for a least 2 months and I'll be unable to update it, so this will become the default family website.  I did write one last blog on the other site, but stay tuned... 11 days left in country, packers tomorrow, yoga certification ceremony, exciting last day of school transportation arrangement - we're going out with a bang! 

A Hasty Wrap Up...

I don't have time to get the whole trip blogged before we head back and start packing for our road trip, so I'll attempt to give a very brief wrap up of the rest of our Chinese Adventure here, and give a full accounting on our Website when we get back from Himachal Pradesh trip.

Suffice it to say, that this China vacation has been the "trip of a lifetime" and we are forever changed because of it. I left off with Tongli so that leads us to our next stop of Shanghai. We met Smitty at the train station and walked about 20 minutes to his amazing apartment. Shanghai was amazing, and the highlight of that portion of our trip was the "Shanghai Death March" (as we are calling it) because of the insane heat and humidity that day. I don't know how many km we walked, but we saw Yuyuan Gardens and Market, People's Square, the City Planning Museum, and walked down Nanjing Street to the Bund with magnificent view of the Pearl Tower.

McFam on the Bund - Pearl Tower in the background

After Shanghai, we trained it back to Nanjing for another few "down days" and saw some really cool, very old stuff. I know, I know... I'm not doing any of this justice, but once I'm back on my own turf with my own keyboard, I promise to do a proper de-briefing.

Sun Yat Sen - Memorial to Father of Modern China

Wall ruins surrounding a Ming Era Tomb

The last part of our journey was spent in "heaven." The Guilin area of China is some of the most beautiful places I've ever seen.

Top of Moon Hill

Well, that's all I have time for... we're out the door for dinner at Outback Steakhouse (beef!) before we head to the airport and head home to India.

Where did they go?

We haven't forgotten about you, our faithful readers (thanks Mom!), but we are in our whirlwind windup of our China trip down in Guilin. I won't assume we'll have internet connectivity at our next hotel, and so I won't be blogging, but we're still alive and loving this amazing country... today we get to do our Li River Cruise. We head back to Beijing on Monday and leave China on Tuesday. Look for a blog one of those days...

Tongli - the Venice of the East

We took a bullet train to Suzhou (I know I'm not spelling or pronouncing any of these names correctly) and really enjoyed riding in style. Very similar to the Japanese bullet trains, these are relatively clean and comfortable cars. The kids had a great time. Once we arrived in Suzhou we hired a van to take us the next hour north to Tongli, a canal town that has been around since the 9th century. To date, this has been my favorite stop. I can't do it justice on Dave's blog, but I'll include a few of my favorite photos here and keep the write up brief.

Girls on the train - McDs, Nintendo DS, iPod... check!

To begin with we had to pay to actually enter the town. Supposedly, prior to this fee you'd pay for each site you visited within the town, but too many people skipped the sites and just enjoyed strolling the canals. We found our fabulous hotel, the Zhengfu Caotang, which featured a traditional Chinese courtyard surrounded by beautifully decorated rooms with antique furniture. Our family had 3 unique rooms, mom & dad, boys, and girls' rooms. I was a little anxious about leaving the girls in a room by themselves, but they did beautifully and felt so very grown up.

We dropped off our luggage, oogled our rooms, and headed out to see the town. We took so many photographs as the entire town was so picturesque. We hopped on a cute little boat for a canal "cruise" that was short and sweet, but gave us a great overview of the area we would walk around later. We ate dinner at a canal side restaurant which featured some interesting dishes, but no one starved, and enjoyed an after dinner stroll/explore through some quaint alleyways. We dropped the kids back at the hotel and continued to explore/shop a little later into the night. It was smoking hot and miserably humid, but after a shower and some serious mosquito netting/repellent, we were able to sleep soundly.

Z was a luggage pulling fool - we couldn't have done this without him

Entrance to our hotel

Wonderful waterways - I love this place

Working in the water - washing, cooking, whatever...

Amazing evening

The morning was excessively humid which resulted in cloudy lenses on the cameras for the first little while. Both the girls got silk jammies and decorative umbrellas on this leg of the trip. We hired 4 pedicabs, (or bicycle rickshaws for those of you in India) and took a tour of some of the sites. We were supposed to stop at 8 sites, but enjoyed the 2nd site so much, 2 was all we could manage before we had to head back to the train station.

The Pearl Pagoda was our favorite stop, at least from the kids perspective because they got to feed the insane koi who were leaping over each other for food, and roll around in a plastic bubble on top of the water.

Pedicabs

Catching Koi

Bubble boy?

Z, A & B in bubbles...

Using the air hose to cool off

We were sad to leave Tongli, but not the heat and humidity. We took 3 taxis to the train station and went our separate ways for the weekend - the Littles headed back home to Nanjing, and we headed East to Shanghai for our next adventure...

Nanjing

The next several days were spent chillaxing at the Little's house (which is awesome BTW) with some little jaunts out and about to appreciate the great little town (population only 6,000,000). We've had trips to the awesome flea market, and Nanjing city museum at Chau Tian Gong. Eaten some fabulous kung pao chicken and hong shau rou by their adorable ayi. Swam in their gorgeous pool with a waterfall, walked on the awesome city walls, checked out a really awesome pagoda temple, and ate some really great food. The Littles have been amazing hosts. Here are some random photos of our first trip to Nanjing.

Nanjing City Museum - a great history of the city with cool maps of the city walls. Most Americans have no concept of what history really is... China is ANCIENT!

Cute baby at flea market - he wasn't for sale

Is it cheating to eat Indian food while we're in China? Well, technically it was Nepalese, but it was good, and we had been eating Chinese food almost a week. And... Dave got to practice his Hindi with the cook and another Indian diner who appreciated at taste of home.

Dan was tired of taxis - what an exhausting way to travel, especially when that's how you travel every day. I have a new respect for the Scholars who live in China... it would drive me insane!

Zac was loving the meat department at the Metro store, the local equivalent to Costco.
Look at tall the beef!

Enjoying the Little's community pool - it rocks!

The Ji Mind Si Temple Pagoda - this was a beautiful complex

The kids lit the insense that was given to them as we entered. There were many worshipers there paying homage to their ancestors. We just enjoyed playing with the fire and learning more about Buddhist culture. Dave and the 3 youngest climbed up to the top of the pagoda and got a great view of Nanjing.

The fam at the pagoda

The girls at the top of the pagoda

Climbing the city walls

Walking along the wall - this is the longest city wall in the world at more than 32 kilometers long. It was heavily damaged by the Japanese bombs dropped during WWII. Nanjing was also the location of a horrific massacre by the Japanese during this time.

B Little's calligraphy - he was practicing for his final the next day. I'd give him an A+