Cassee and Bony Go to China

Cassee and Bony Go to China (while Garry and Alan stay home)

I am back from China. I and another faculty person from Lincoln and a former student were invited to speak at an International Nursing Conference in Beijing. We had a great experience. The conference people there took great care of us. We were given own translator, a young nurse who spoke excellent English, and she stayed with us from 7 AM to 9 PM every day. They even made the translators stay at the hotel, in case we needed something. We needed a translator as most of the nurses and administrators speak very limited English. We had trouble pronouncing their names but so did they saying our names. I was "Cass-ee" for the trip and Bunny was "Bony".

We stayed in a 5 star hotel and they took us to a different restaurant for each lunch and dinner. We ate excellent food that did not resemble the Chinese food we get in the US or, thankfully, the scary pictures we saw on CNN of assorted insects and animal parts. We were treated like celebrities. Everyone wanted to take our picture, even strangers wanted to have their picture with the Americans.

The last 2 days our hosts took us sightseeing. We went shopping at a huge market, toured the Great Wall, Tianamen Square, the Forbidden City, the Summer Palace and Gardens, a park area in the mountains where we went on a boat ride at a huge lake area with steep canyon walls and crystal clear water. We saw the Birds Nest and the "Water Cube" from the Olympics. China is proud of the their success in the Olympics. The 3 gold medal winners in "women's" gymnastics (they do look to be about 12 yrs old) were at our welcoming ceremony. Our hosts paid for and arranged everything from transportation to buying us jackets for traveling to the mountains. These are extremely nice, gracious people.

It was a lifetime opportunity to see China in a way we never could on our own. Garry is jealous so if I get invited again, he will be there too.

---

---