Who Wouldn't Love to Pet a Penguin?

Last month, we were fortunate to have a very special visitor, my best friend, Kimmy, took time from her grad school studies to trek all the way to Asia to see us. Zach was temporarily held back with the whole recovering from surgery thing, so we loaded him down with a bunch of delivery menus and pirated movies, then Kim and I headed to Hiroshima!









Zach's parents and his Uncle Neil and cousin Kara were in Hiroshima at the same time, so we met up and spent the day exploring the A-Bomb Museum and Peace Park. It was unbelievable to see the devastating effects of the bomb, the museum contained articles such as melted bicycles and burnt clothing and lunch pails, pictures of the devastation, and letters discussing the A-bomb testing and decision to drop from influential people such as FDR and Einstein.







The city was basically leveled after the bomb was dropped over 60 years ago, but there are a few buildings like this dome that survived.












After the bomb, it was predicted that nothing would grow in the area for 75 years. Kim and I are standing in front of a famous Phoenix tree in the center of the city that started growing the spring after the bomb was dropped. The tree provided hope for the devastated people of Hiroshima as they began to rebuild their city.









Lionel (Zach's dad) was kind enough to set up a talk with one of the A-Bomb survivors. She spoke candidly about the day the bomb dropped and how she lost many friends and family both at the time of the bombing and since then to the after effects. At age 73, after many surgeries necessary after her exposure to radiation, and as a breast cancer survivor, she was a true inspiration.

After spending the day exploring the history of the A-Bomb, we decided to see a more natural side to Hiroshima and headed to Miyajima, a beautiful island close to the city. The island is covered with vicious, paper eating deer, so we held on to our maps and tried to avoid any confrontations....

The deer didn't seem to mind the rain, as they blended right into the crowd of tourists.

Here Kim is almost being attacked by an aggressive deer, fortunately, she is not made of paper (their #1 snack choice) so she was safe.

Miyajima had the world's biggest rice paddle, as you can see, I'm on the right side by the handle and it is quite large.


















Now to what Kim and I have decided was the absolute highlight of her trip.........we stopped into the Miyajima Aquarium to dry off and warm up, and stumbled upon their 'Penguin Walk', where we got to walk around with penguins and actually pet them.













Kim and I had no shame as we lined up with all the little kids, waiting for our turn. Thank goodness Zach wasn't with us, as he has me on a strict 'no touching strange animals' policy after the monkey biting incident in Indonesia last May.





After our 2 days in Hiroshima, we headed to Shanghai to show Kim around our home (where she creatively concocted the drawing for our guest room wall that you see at the beginning of the entry). We were happy to see Zach had managed just fine....although he did keep mentioning the weekend would have been a lot more comfortable with an Xbox 360. C'est la vie.










After 3 days in Shanghai, we headed to Beijing to accompany Zach on a business trip (and when we say accompany, we really mean stay in his nice suite at the Grand Hyatt courtesy of Credit Suisse). We visited the Forbidden City and had our picture taken with Mao (left).





Visited the Summer Palace.......











where Kim made a furry friend.....








And had a delicious Thanksgiving dinner at the Grand Hyatt, turkey, pumpkin pie, and all the traditional fixings.




















To work off all that turkey, we headed to the Great Wall.







The day we went it snowed, which was beautiful, but very cold.











We ended the week with a fantastic Beijing Duck dinner.......all in all, it was a wonderful visit, Kimmy, we can't wait for you to come back to China!!!!!!