The White Pagoda - Friday

This is a statue of a mother and her child. It is symbolic of the Yellow River being the mother of China and it's culture.

Behind us is the most famous bridge that crosses the Yellow River. We walked across it after coming down from the White Pagoda.

Friday we took a tram up to the White Pagoda, then walked down. It was beautiful to see, but there were a lot of stairs for the strollers. Way back when, a Lama was sent to Mongolia to Genghis Khan as a gift. The Lama died on it's way to Mongolia, in this city. So they built this Pagoda as a tribute to the Lama. Very Interesting.

Ivy feeding birds out of her hand in a city park while we were waiting for our ride to the airport.


The crowd that gathered around Ivy as she fed the birds.

In the middle of this city park was a large grassy field, beautifully manicured, with a little 1 foot fence all the way around the perimeter. Rick asked Michael why no one was playing on the grass. Michael said that in China, the grass in parks was just to look at and enjoy, but there were so many people that if they allowed them to walk on the grass, the grass would be ruined. Rick told him about the grass at home and how he has to mow it all the time. Michael said, "Oh yeah, I saw someone doing that on TV once."

Ivy and Luke asleep after getting off the airplane from Lanzhou to Guanzhou Friday night. Only 5 more days and we will be home!

Luke had a hard time on the airplane because he was so tired. He cried a lot, but finally fell asleep. Ivy fell asleep as well (it was a 3 hour flight) so when the plane landed, we took our time getting off because we had to carry 2 sleeping kids, plus the carry-on baggage and two strollers. When we finally got both kids in our arms, and the bags balanced precariously on our backs, climbed down those steep stairs they put at the door to planes sometimes, we saw the most crowded, long bus we had ever seen. It was about 50 yards away. We started walking towards it, my mouth literally hanging open. There was no way we were going to all fit in that bus, and get the strollers in as well, people were already practically hanging out the doors. Luckily, they decided the bus was too full for us, so they had a small van drive up to pick us up to take us to baggage claim. Yeah!!!