Thursday, December 17, 2015

South China Botanical Gardens

We went on an adventure to the South China Botanical Gardens. Kind of funny since I lived right next door to one in Denver and have yet to go to it! BUT, I am in China so....must see all! 
Walking in felt like we were walking into Jurassic Park!





"Take care to fall into water" I love Chinese translations....

These trees are super neat! They are all over the place here, too!



Giant balls!








Fish!





ME! And fish!

I'm pretty sure behind this wall is where the raptors were ;-)



"Take care of your head" 

Green House!

Pond in Green House

More Green House!

That's Drew!







That's Brianne!

So is that!






Spaceship at the Botanical Gardens!

Abandoned construction in the Botanical Gardens. It looked kinda neat though...

Holy roots!
I'll post more soon, I have lots to share and lots to say but this one will be short and sweet with pictures.
Love you all :)

Thursday, November 5, 2015

Sacred Heart Cathedral

I know, I know. I just updated and my life couldn't possibly be that exciting! Probably not but I am going to try be better about updating as my memory for what days happened when is...abysmal at best. I ventured out (on my own!) and found the Sacred Heart Cathedral today. This is one of the things I found before I came out here that I wanted to see. It's not that it was hard to find or get to, I just hadn't. Today I had no plans so I decided to just go for it. Totally worth it. It is AMAZING. Gorgeous architecture. Not for lack of French influence. They actually asked a French Architect to design it. You will see in the pictures there are signs that say "Jerusalem 1863" and "Roma 1863" stating that the Roman Catholic Church had its origin in Jerusalem in the east and evolved in Rome in the west. One kilogram of soil taken from Rome and one stone from Jerusalem were laid under the stones in the ground, respectively. Due to lack of machinery, this was completely built by hand, after disputes and lack of being able to communicate the church was finally finished in 1888, after 25 years of construction.
JERUSALEM 1863

ROMA 1863


This is the one picture I took before a lady pointed to a sign in Chinese, per my awesome deductive reasoning skills, I am going to have to say it probably read something along the lines of  NO PICTURES INSIDE THE CHURCH! Sorry!...

This makes it look round, it's not. It is however my first attempt at a panoramic photo...I might need to work on that...


Darn... can't really see it. Gargoyle has a plant growing out of his head. Actually, most of them did.


The Stained Glass was really cool. 



Think the sink produces holy water?


Also, I found Christmas! When I was walking down the street to find the Cathedral there were TONS of stores with Christmas trees and decorations and blow up snowmen and Santa Claus statues! And a bunch of wholesale shops are in the area with a bunch of other neat things. I got some Christmas shopping done! Yay me. And lucky you. Well, some of you. Haha. I guess seeing the stuff just got me in the mood :) It was overall quite a successful day.