A Tribute to Jimmy
China Time: Sunday, December 19, 2010 9:00 pm
I think I’ve mentioned that our guide’s name is Jimmy Gu. If not, I really need to slap myself silly. Anyway, Jimmy was our guide while we were in the Chongqing region. Today was our last day with him. After we left for Beijing, Jimmy was flying to Hong Kong to meet another tour group.
So today, Jimmy took us to the Chongqing Zoo. We got to see hippos and panda bears and tigers, oh my! We also got to see regular brown bears. The pandas were really cool because there were three generations in the zoo. You’d think seeing the brown bears wouldn’t be a big deal, but it was so fun! Meg brought a bottle of Mountain Dew and the bears would do tricks for a drink. The spun in circles and waved. It was so sweet and cute!
After the zoo we went to Chongqing Eling Park. In the park was a museum on the Three Gorges. Inside was a 100-meter mural of the Three Gorges area. The mural also showed how high the water rose after the dam was built. Sometimes, the water covered whole villages, like Fengdu, and the people had to be relocated. Fengdu was special. It was the only village big enough to rebuild. The rest were all moved to different towns because they were small. Think about it. All of these villages had between 10,000 and 100,000 people living there. They were considered too small of towns to rebuild. It’s amazing. Could you imagine the government saying they were going to expand the Scioto River (remember this is hypothetical, I don’t think the Scioto would have anywhere close to that sort of impact.)? In order to do this, they had to flood all of Chillicothe. Everyone who lives there has to move to somewhere else because the town is too small to bother rebuilding. How crazy is that?!
Also, while we were at the park, we decided to take a family photo with Jimmy. We asked a Chinese visitor to take the picture. After he took one of just us, the group he was with all started crowding around us to take pictures. It was so funny. Unfortunately, the lady who had my camera came into the group picture, so I don’t have a picture, only Jimmy does L
After the park, we headed back to the restaurant from yesterday for another lunch. It was just as good, if not better. Then, we had to say goodbye. We drove to the airport where, after checking our luggage, we had ice cream with Jimmy. But after a half hour, we had to part ways. We will certainly miss him and I hope he enjoys Hong Kong.
Two hours later we arrived in Beijing. This time our entire luggage arrived safely J We met up with Nancy, our new tour guide, and headed to our hotel. There, we met up with Adriana, Ann, Ron, and Grandma Jean. Tomorrow we will get to meet Julie and Lia. It is exciting to finally get to meet them and to finally speak real English with someone other than family.
Tomorrow is exciting. We will be heading to the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square. We will also be visiting the Olympic Stadium. So that means it’s time to head to bed so I’ll be ready for tomorrow. Hope you’re all doing well.
God Bless,
~Kristen
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