This guy is writing characters on the sidewalk with water. When he saw us come up and watch him, he let us try!
Dana writing "I love China"
At the Panda Research Center in Chengdu, Sichuan Province
They are so cute! We got to see some baby pandas, too... they were only 5 days old and still in the incubator. They were about a hand's width long and all pink - no black and white yet.
Ray and I with our tickets, waiting to go through security. 
The Bird's Nest
The other tickets that we got, through a lottery system, was for a session of water polo. I had never watched water polo before, so I learned as we watched. It was pretty interesting! We got to watch Montenegro, Serbia, and Hungary, three of the final four teams.
Security to enter the Olympic grounds was a cultural experience. The first day the lines were long but moved fairly fast. The second day we entered the Olympic grounds at another entry point near the water polo venue, and there weren’t lines at all. When we went to Beijing for just a few days to watch the Olympics, we left everything except the bare necessities in Tianjin, just a half-hour high speed train ride away. When we went through security, the security guard asked if he could look in my purse. He pulled out a stick of deodorant, and asked what it was! I told him it was deodorant, that you put on to help you smell good. My answer seemed to satisfy them, until he pulled out another deodorant (my purse had all of our toothbrushes and deodorant sticks so that the others didn't have to carry a bag), and again, asked what it was! (Something that would be helpful to know is that Chinese don’t wear deodorant. Ever. I think I’ve seen one brand of the tiny travel sticks in one store here, and it cost $7 U.S.)
I responded with the same answer, and told him that I was carrying all four of ours. Then he proceeded to ask me to put it on to show him it was safe! He handed me a guy’s stick, and looking up, I saw one of the guys, and told him to come put on his deodorant! Thinking I was offering him one last application before it was confiscated, he called back that he had already put it on and didn’t need to! I told him that no, they wanted me to put it on to show that it was safe to take into the park! Seeing me hold it up, he realized that it wasn’t his, so I called to Ray and told him to come put on his deodorant! He also thought that they were going to confiscate it, so he told me that it was okay, he didn’t need it. He eventually understood that he needed to apply his deodorant in front of them, so he walked back to the security counter, and with several sets of curious security guards watching, put on his deoderant! After appeasing them, the original security guy told me, “Okay, thank you. Enjoy the games!”
And of course, the Great Wall! This was my third time visiting it, but I've gone to a different part every time, and each one is different, which makes it fun every time. This one was in Tianjin instead of Beijing, so there were not as many people as the other times I've gone.Another funny cultural experience happened in a little grocery store. The four of us went in to get some snacks. We chose the divide-and-conquer method, so none of us were together. A few minutes later, I heard my brother say, "Um, I think we have a situation, here." As I was turning to see what was going on, I hear a Chinese employee say in very hesitant English, "Do you speak Chinese?" I laughed when I saw three Chinese woman following Ray up to me, the looks on all four of their faces priceless! After asking them what the problem was, they explained that of all the things that you can buy in the store, he had chosen a little tiny box of candy that you pay per weight, so they needed to weigh it for him. I explained it to Ray, and he handed over his precious little candy for them to weigh. A few minutes later, I couldn't help but laugh again when I learned the price: 0.03¥, or the equivalent of $0.0044 U.S.!
You can see more pictures of our time together here.
