So now let me tell you about my birthday plus 2. This was Sunday. We had slept over at our friends house in Chengyang. This day, February 22, we were invited to visit's the home of the young woman that we tutor. Her name is Amy. She and her family live in Jimo. Jimo is fairly close to Chengyang, so Amy dad picked us up near the Choi's home in Chengyang. It turns out that Amy's home is only about 20 minutes from the Choi's house. The Choi's live in north Chengyang and Amy lives in south Jimo, so it looks closer on the map than it looks.
Amy's dad picked us up at around 8:30 am and took us to this mountain near Jimo. Well it's really a hill. Not tall enough to be a mountain.
This is part of the mountain where people can find crystals It is pretty impressive. They do not want you to get too close because there are parts that may just come falling down and probably hurt you if they hit you.
This picture is me, Amy and Amy's cousin and best friend, Anna.
One with Gary, too. It was pretty windy and cold as you can probably tell.
After this site, we went to a place where they have found an enormous piece of petrified wood. There are many pieces in these hills, but this one is huge. They have built a museum around it to protect the wood. It is pretty amazing.
The building they have constructed to protect the petrified wood.
This is the whole tree. Usually you only find small portions and not a whole tree trunk. This was cool and amazing to see. The picture below is the end of the tree. You can still see some of the rings.
Another piece of tree they have found. This is also in the building. It was found a short distance away from the bigger one.
In this hill, can find many pieces of petrified wood. Many people go out and look for them. In fact, there is a Chinese law that protects the artifacts. You cannot take pieces of petrified wood out of China. I think they are really trying to save these artifacts. The museum had many pieces of petrified wood to look at.
We enjoyed our visit to this museum. I really like looking at this kind of thing.
After the visit to the museum, we went to see the two tree farms that Amy's dad owns. He is a tree farmer and grows trees which he sells all over China and even in America. On his one farm he has planted 2,000,000 trees. That is a lot of trees.
The two above pictures only show a portion of the trees they have planted. There are many green houses on the property where even more smaller trees are growing. It was an incredible sight to see. I did not even think they could grow that many at one time, but seeing it I can believe it.
Then we went to the other tree farm they have. These two deer are on the property of the second tree farm. They are considered the mascots of the company. We were able to feed them. Amy's dad said the deer do not like people, but one came right up to Gary when he was standing next to the fence. I thought that was cool.
These are all of the second tree farm. This farm has trees that have grown bigger. He told us that they usually sell them when they have been growing for 4 years or so. That way they are big enough to handle being transplanted somewhere else.
After the wonderful visit to the tree farms, we went to Amy's house to have lunch. We met Amy's mom and her twin sister, who is Anna's mom.
Amy and Anna in Amy's room
This is Amy's family. Her dad is in the back. Amy's mom is in the orange shirt because her favorite color is orange. Amy's aunt is the one in black because her favorite color is black. They are very funny and outgoing. We did have to have Amy and Anna translate for us because they do not speak very much English. Both Amy's mom and aunt are Japanese translators and travel to Japan a couple of times a year. They are very smart.
They fed us yummy Chinese food: shrimp, dumplings (which I helped put together when we got there), vegetables, and many other things. We had nuts and fruits while we were waiting for lunch to be ready. Then we just relaxed, talked, taught Anna how to play "Go Fish", and laughed a lot. We continued to eat snacks. They kept bringing out more snacks, bananas, oranges, candy, nuts. We ate dinner around 5:30, but I did not eat much because I had already eaten so much. You eat because you do not want to make anyone feel bad, but I was so full by the time we got home. Amy and her dad drove us all the way back to Qingdao and we arrived back at our apartment around 8:30. For my birthday, Amy's dad gave me a piece of Crystal. He also gave Gary and I each a piece of petrified wood that he has found. We are going to be able to decorate our new apartment with all of our new gifts.
If you look at the picture above, you can see the telephone sitting on what looks like a piece of tree. It actually is. It is a small peach tree turned upsidedown. The roots are the top of the table. Both Gary and I thought this was pretty neat. We may do it in our house, too.
Well my birthday plus 2 was fun, fulfilling and tiring!
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