In China, we never once saw the sun.  Our photos are witness to the fact that the sky remained a smoggy, humid, grey colour, not unlike used bathwater, but without the ring around the edges.

In lieu of a ring of petrified solids ringing the outer edge, China has the Great Wall.  And no amount of scrubbing with the latest descaler or CLR will remove it. It is the product of 2,000 years of history and untold millions of man-hours of labour and sweat.  But more on that later.

Our time in Beijing was enjoyable, within limits.  We would not recommend going in July unless you like wet saunas and grey skies.  October or May sound like promising months, when the skies are clear and the temperatures moderate. 

Our flight to Beijing was uneventful.  Leaving Regina at 8:45 am on the direct flight to Vancouver, we made it in plenty of time to cruise YVR, buy some pizza and subs, and find the gate, oddly placed approximately 2 days’ walk from the closest toilets.

About half of the people getting on the Air Canada plane for Beijing had Canadian passports.  The rest were a mishmash of other places, with an emphasis on the USA and China. We had chosen Air Canada over the slightly less expensive Air China option later the same day for several reasons:

• Online reviews said the Air Canada in-flight entertainment system was better (and our kids had expectations after last year’s flight to Frankfurt on Lufthansa);
• It was said that the seat pitch on Air China’s planes is one inch less than on Air Canada.  If you are me (Brad), this is important.  Seat pitch is code for leg room.
• The rumour mill also stated that Air Canada’s in-flight food was slightly more predictable than Air China’s. While we didn’t expect Air China to be handing out deep-fried scorpions like you can actually get in Beijing, we knew the kids would appreciate something normal in the last few hours during which normal might be available.

After an uneventful flight across the International Date Line (the plane didn’t even have to slow down to pay a toll or anything), we landed in Beijing a few minutes later than the scheduled time. We didn’t actually know we were landing until seconds before actually doing so, because the visibility was so poor.

Taxiing up to the terminal, it was obvious that Beijing’s airport is massive, a theory which is also confirmed by observing the airport from the inside.  Massive and mostly empty translates into a long walk to a short line through immigration. At each immigration officer’s desk, they had a small electronic device facing the incoming passengers.  It displayed the badge number of the officer and requested that you use one of four buttons to indicate your level of customer service satisfaction with your immigration officer. Impression so far – pretty impressive. A communist country was interested in real time customer satisfaction feedback, a concept which would be instantly rejected by any (immigration officers’/city workers’/teachers’) union back home.

From immigration, you go down an escalator and board a train, which takes you several kilometers to a different building where your luggage has already arrived. With nothing to declare except “Wow, these Chinese guys built a nice airport” we zipped through customs and into a throng of placard waving locals. It turned out they weren’t on strike or cheering the arrival of the national ping pong team – they were tour guides waving the names of their customers in the hopes of collecting them quickly and retiring to the air conditioned comfort of their buses and minivans.

We had previously been emailed a photo of our guide, so it was easily to find Tony in the crowd.  His sign displaying a misspelled “Farquhar” confirmed it.  Tony led us to the elevators.

Now one would think that an airport serving a capital region of something like 30 million would have more than two elevators.  And one would think that such elevators would be large enough to carry more than one or two luggage carts at once.  But one’s thinking would reveal one’s roots in the Western World.

Downstairs, we found our driver and van (some kind of Mercedes minivan, unless it has a knock-off hood ornament), and away we went.

They took us to our hotel, the Guxiang 20 Hotel, which was described as a “courtyard boutique hotel” in a hutong, which is a traditional Beijing neighbourhood.  This was correct.  The hotel was indeed in a hutong, albeit a slightly touristified one containing the Beijing Backpackers’ Hostel and the requisite number of surrounding coffee houses and hookah pipe establishments.  And t-shirt shops selling “Oba Mao” t-shirts featuring the US President wearing a Mao jacket and cap.  The alley was very crowded, and sometime hard to navigate.  Anyone on a business trip looking for easy taxi access to and from their hotel should be warned off.

However, the hotel was good.  By good, I mean air conditioned.  Nothing else matters in Beijing in July except A/C.  We had two nice rooms with all the usual amenities, comfortable beds, nice bathrooms, in-room safe (albeit not attached to anything, so an intruder could just carry the whole thing off if he were sufficiently convinced of the value of doing so).

On our arrival day, there was actually nothing on the schedule, so in the interest of staying awake until an appropriate bedtime, we walked the streets to look around.  We had supper at what turned out to be a wonton soup specialty place which had a plaque outside proclaiming the stamp of approval of the Central Committee.  We pointed and waved and somehow ate some things like Cod Wonton Soup and Orange Fanta.  Total cost: 71 rmb, or about $12. 

On our way back to the hotel, we stopped at a Quik Mart, where we bought BBQ chips, Coke, Lemonade, and ice cream drumsticks.  Total cost: $3.

The hotel included a buffet breakfast, which we ate by ourselves on 2 of 4 days there.  It was not a big hotel (maybe 32 rooms), and for the most part, they seemed unoccupied.  Which meant the staff were attentive, albeit in a language we did not understand.  The breakfast included some things we recognized, some things we didn’t recognize, and some things whose names we recognized, but which we did not recognize upon further examination.  After figuring out which ones were the octopus and the squid, we stuck to the things we did recognize and ate well.  Who knew fried rice for breakfast could be so good?

On our table was a no-smoking sign placed there courtesy of the Beijing Patriotic Health Campaign Committee.  The background music was Bryan Adams (Everything I Do).

 Each morning, Tony and our driver would be ready at the appointed time to take us out into the sauna in search of adventure.

 Day 1

Tienanmen Square

• Brad bought a Chairman Mao watch for $5 from a street vendor.  It stopped 6 hours later and the stem fell out.  Chairman Mao’s time is running out.  At Tienanmen Square, there were massive lineups of Chinese tourists waiting to see Chairman Mao’s frozen body lying in state.  Many of these were tourists from the countryside who had rarely seen Westerners in their lives.  So our 3-child family of giants with blond-ish and/or curly hair got a lot of attention in this land of 1-child families of short-ish people with black hair.  Many stopped us and asked (much using of hand motions and waving of cameras) to have their photos taken with us.  We are probably featured more often in other people’s Facebook Beijing Trip Photo Albums than our own.
• Tienanmen Square is so big that even though there were probably hundreds of Western tourists there, you couldn’t find them and they represented less that 0.01% of the people present.
• There was a significant police presence.

Forbidden City

• Big, and by the crowds present, no longer forbidden. The Chinese emperors knew how to put on a show.

Peking Duck Lunch

• Kung Pow (literal translation from menu – The Temple Explodes the Chicken)
• Beef
• Broccoli
• Coke/Sprite
• Peking Duck

Toy Market 

• Basically a big mall full of small stands with people selling plastic do-dads with a life span slightly longer than it would take you to leave the building.  However, I did find a new watch band to replace my broken one, and it really is real leather.  At $6, I should have bought several – they always cost me more than $20 at The Bay.

Did I mention it was hot and humid? 

Acrobat Show

• Thankfully indoors with A/C and expensive snacks.  Background music prior to the show: Sarah McLaughlin.  The only downside was that the theatre was designed by the same people who designed Tajikistan Airlines seating plans.  This was a place for people with short femurs.
• We bought some Pringles at usurious prices at the Acrobat Show.  They also had chips with some crazy flavours: Mexican Tomato Chicken, Italian Meat Sauce, French Chicken, Seaweed, Crab, etc.
• Before the Acrobat Show, the announcer asked people to “Please turn down your iPhone”. (Yeah, Dale.)

Supper was in a bar up the street from the hotel.  The kids were falling asleep, but the bacon spaghetti with meat sauce was good, to the tune of Simon & Garfunkel.

Day 2

Breakfast

• Like yesterday, but with a different group of unidentifiable items

Summer Palace

• We drove to NW Beijing to the Summer Palace, which maintains all of its charms from the Imperial Era, right down to the parking lot full of tourist buses and a McDonald’s right across the street.
• We rented a pedal boat (big enough for all of us) and toured the man-made lake, wondering why we were pedaling in the heat.  Although the Summer Palace was 1-2 degrees cooler than downtown, pedaling a boat for an hour in 45 degree temps (with humidex) was a sure way to completely drench yourself in your own sweat.

Hutong Cooking Lessons/Tour/Lunch

• We drove back to the Drum Tower area (actually near our hotel and switched to rickshaws.  At two people per rickshaw, it took 3 of them to carry us.  Lynette and Annie’s rickshaw had brakes, but they only made noise rather than actually slowing them down.  This was added to by the sound of them crashing into the back of Tommy & Brad’s rickshaw everytime we stopped.
• At one stop, we got out and went down a circuitous alley and through a door, where we were motioned to an empty table.  The other table in the room was occupied by people speaking Spanish.  We were served a great Chinese lunch, and then we were given dumpling making lessons along with a Dutch couple.  Lynette and Annie shone at this, and then it was time to leave.

Hutong Tour on Rickshaw

• We had a fun ride through the hutong on the rickshaws, dodging chickens, children, and Toyota Camrys.

Kung Fu Show

• After a one hour rest break back at the hotel at the request of the kids, we went to a Kung Fu Show at The Red Theatre.  Fun was had by all, especially when the Kung Fu guys broke things on their heads.
• In the interest of normal(ish), we got dropped at the McDonalds near the Drum Tower for supper and then walked back to our hotel.  The McDonalds was refreshing, but we were soaked in our own sweat again from just the short walk back to the hotel.

Day 3

Ming Tombs

• We drove out of the city (or so we thought) to the Ming Tombs.  We visited the Ding Ling tomb (40.29278, 116.22238), which is the only one which has been excavated.  He was apparently one of the worst emperors ever, which is understandable when you look at his name.  His punishment appears to be to have tourists come through his burial site.
• Then we went to a Chinese restaurant somewhere west of 40.22049, 116.26194.
• Then we drove toward the Great Wall, getting temporarily lost here: 40.28898, 116.58196.  Our drive took us past endless construction and development, including car dealerships and fancy apartments.

Great Wall

• Eventually we arrived at the Wall, where we struggled against gravity and sweat and tiredness to walked up to the Wall, reaching the local high point at 40.67805, 117.22912 (alt: 450 m).  Then we walked down and had supper on a road near some kids playing ping pong (you know the place, don’t you?  It’s somewhere just up the road from 40.68457, 117.23707)
• Then once it was dark, we walked up a different road and paths and stairs to a different part of the wall, where we struggled against gravity and sweat and tiredness and darkness to the Wall.  Then we walked along the Wall to the next tower, and upon climbing to the top of it, we reached our sleeping spot at 40.67632, 117.23962.
• Our guide unlocked the tower, handed out sleeping bags, pillows, and sleeping pads.  Then he showed us the bathrooms (a blue bucket) and said he’d be back with breakfast at 5:30 am.
• We were all up by 5:00 am waiting for him to arrive.  We’d been woken by some Chinese tourists in the next tower who were determined to photograph the sunrise.  One never came due to the smog.  The guide said that in July, they had only had a sunrise on July 8^th. There was too much smog on the other days.
• After a quick breakfast of bananas and muesli, we set off on a hike of the Great Wall.  The normal tour includes 30 towers, which is about 6 miles.  Due to construction, we only did half of this.  We are glad, because otherwise we would be dead.
• Once we reached “the end”, we had to walk down a path of a couple of miles to get to the road.  During this walk, I (Brad) redefined the term “showerhead”, giving myself a shower from the sweat falling from my head.  I have never been so wet in a t-shirt without being in a lake.
• Once we reached the road, we drove back to Beijing, and most of us (excluding the driver, thankfully) fell asleep.  Upon reaching the city, we passed new dealerships for Jaguar, VW, Cadillac, Toyota & Rolls Royce (somewhere around 40.01833, 116.43821).

Olympic Venues (39.99235, 116.38582)

• We went straight to the Olympic stadium area and walked from the Water Cube to the other side of the Bird’s Nest stadium.  By the time we got there, we were soaked again.  

Golden Hans

• Then our guide took us to a “normal Western buffet” called Golden Hans somewhere near the North 4th Ring Road (they have 6).  It was a sort of German-Chinese brewpub with a buffet full of weirdness.  And the AC wasn’t working.  We struggled through and ran back to the van.

I dropped the family off at the hotel and had the guide take me to the China International Travel Service office to pick up our train tickets for the next day.  I had ordered them online and paid for them via Paypal.  Everything worked out fine.

For supper, no one wanted to leave the hotel.  So in desperation, I remembered that I’d seen some McDonald’s delivery guys on bikes.  After convincing the front desk staff that this was conceivably possible, they found a phone number, dialed, and gave me the phone.  On the other end was a clear English speaker who took my order, including all the crazy customizing we have to do to Jack’s cheeseburgers.  When they asked the address, I gave the phone back to the front desk girl who talked for a while.  I was told it would cost $1 for delivery and that it would arrive in less than 30 minutes.

Only 10 minutes after hanging up the phone, there was a knock at our room door, and our food had arrived.  I tried to tip the delivery guy, but he didn’t understand.  Neither did the girl from the front desk.  So I gave up and paid with the right change, and settled down to a hero’s welcome from my family as the best hunter/gatherer in the universe. 

Leaving Beijing 

The next morning, Tony came for us at 6 am and delivered us to the train station.  He helped us find the right gate, and we waited in line with a bunch of other Western (read European) tourists for our train.  Once the gate opened, we carried our bags down a large flight of stairs, searched for Carriage #8, and then Berths #5-9, and installed ourselves for the 30 hour ride to Ulaanbaatar.

His vehicle couldn’t fit us all, so he arranged a mini-van.  I agreed to pay the driver and for the fuel.  When you rent a vehicle here, it comes with a driver.  How else would they know you would bring it back?

At the appointed time of 8 am on Tuesday morning ,we came out of the apartment and found the van.  It was a Hyandai something-or-other.

There were 4 people waiting for us.  The ED, the driver, an older unshaven guy with a fedora, and a woman.  The van was already riding low in the back end. 

The older guy turned out to be the watchman from one of the projects we would visit, and he needed to be returned there after a few days in Ulaanbaatar (UB).  The woman was the organization’s head agrologist – she spoke some, but not much English.

We threw our luggage in the back, piled in, and took off. 

Halfway across the city, we suddenly stopped on the street and a guy with a Dell computer bag and a sleeping back piled in, filing the last available seat.  I still don’t know his name, but he spoke pretty good English.  We later learned, he had recently joined the organization as a Project Manager, and that this was his first visit to these projects.

A little further along, while still in the city, we stopped in front of a shop and the watchman hopped out and disappeared.  After a while, we came back with a small plastic bag which contained a large can of beer, a big bundle of tobacco, and a pack of smokes. He gave the cigarettes to the driver, and away we went.

About a mile later, the watchman suddenly started talking urgently, we pulled over to the side of the road, and turned around.  Then we let ourselves in to the gated yard of what looked like an abandoned factory. We drove through the compound and around to the back, passing piles of gravel and old bits of disassembled Soviet apartment buildings. At the back, we loaded a bunch of t-bar metal in the back of the van with the help of a guy who appeared from nowhere. On the way out, we were stopped by a woman who lived in an old ger on the property and we almost ran over her children and dogs.

Then we stopped to buy fuel.  I paid 86,000 T to fill up the van with 68.8 L of diesel. They also filled up some jerry cans in the back.  I didn’t get out to check, but I’d be amazed if we weren’t driving on the axles by this point.

300 m down the road, we stopped again – this time to inflate the tires at a tire shop make out of an old blue shipping container with a sign on the side.  Some men were wrestling the wheel off a dual axle dump truck.

So at 9:20, we finally left the city.

Along the way, I took some GPS readings with my Blackberry so I could keep track of where we went.  Occasionally, I will put those in here.  Just copy and paste to Google Earth or Google Maps to follow along.

47.91311, 106.32485

We turned off the pavement for a place called Bayansogt somewhere near 47.91728, 106.13487.

We drove across country, following a dirt track for well over 30 minutes.  Up and over a small mountain range, and through some valleys in behind.  We passed some canola fields with odd seeding patterns.

We can to Bayansogt and visited a 40 ha farm nursery, where they were digging root cellers by hand and some guys were drilling a well with some ancient drilling equipment.  They also had an old circus wagon which they lived in.  48.03669, 105.82162

This location was in a huge valley which would have all been cultivated land back home in Canada.  But it was mostly used for grazing.  In Mongolia, people use fences to keep animals out of cultivated crops.  In Canada, we use fences to keep animals in their pastures.  But that’s what happens when your whole country is a pasture, and there aren’t many cultivated acres.

Bayansogt used to be an old collective dairy farm in the communist days, but it had clearly fallen into disrepair and only about 20 families remained.

After a snack in the watchman’s ger, we hit the road (dirt track with grass in the middle). We left the watchman behind, so we had a bit more seating room.

Something happened at 47.93788, 105.61419 and at another undisclosed location that I am not allowed to talk about.  But it was bumpy and would give anyone with a fragile stomach a fragile stomach.

Then we suddenly saw three huge pigs wander by.  And immediately after, Brad’s seat broke, reducing us to tight seating all over again.  This took place only 500 m before getting back on the paved highway.

We rejoiced at the smooth road, only to have it run out about 25 km later. A new part was being built, so it was back to the track, which ran parallel to the road in a meandering way for the next 30-40 minutes.

47.61506, 104.85452

We stopped for lunch at 4 pm at a place called Altai San.  It was a sort of food stop where the truckers and long distance buses stopped for a break and food.  We had some noodle soup (with mutton), some eggs, and a Coke and hit the road.

A while later, we came to a place whose sign read PAWAAHT, which is actually RASHAANT in English. It looked like a substantial place of sort, with a bunch of old soviet industry. Here we stopped on the side of the road and met some Chinese looking guys in a truck. We gave them some stuff out of the back of the van.

When we went to leave, the van wouldn’t start, so we had to push-start it backwards down a hill.  And off we went.

Shortly after, we stopped at some dunes and got mobbed by kids with camels.  Lynette and Jack rode bactrian (two-humped) camels for 5,000 T (about $4.00 – not each – total).  If you follow the road in Google Earth, this is by the green area the road passes through.

A busload of Japanese tourists was there, and some of the girls were trying to take pictures of themselves jumping in the air on the dunes.

5:30 pm – off we went (again).

6:42 pm – the road suddenly turned to gravel, just like it sometimes does in Saskatchewan.  This took place at 46.95983, 102.93945.

For quite a while, Tommy talked about cheeseburgers.

7:10 pm – Arrived in Khujirt by fording a small stream five times. It is a town of significance (about 8,000 people) in what feels like the middle of nowhere, particularly when considering the condition of the “roads”.

We checked in to a ger camp, where they set our family up in one ger with 5 beds.  Brad’s bed was at 46.9063, 102.76851

Then we went to a restaurant, which was more of a karaoke bar with ping pong & pool tables and a small confectionary.  The woman said she could cook something, but it would take over an hour to make food.  That was at 46.89825, 102.77541

So we went looking for another restaurant and found a ger restaurant, where we waited over an hour for them to make food, but we got to watch.  By now it was dark - we’re not sure how the lady didn’t cut off her fingers cutting noodles in the dark.

It was a cold night.  All but Lynette were warm and reasonably comfortable.  When we woke up, it felt colder inside than it turned out to be outside.

For breakfast, we went to the farm project at 46.90728, 102.76135 and ate in the ger.  We had candies, cookies, scrambled eggs, tea, endless fresh cucumbers from the greenhouse, and bread with raspberry jam.

We inspected the crops (an August 7 frost had really damaged the potatoes) and toured around. Then we used the latrine pit and hit the road.

At 1:40 pm, we came to the Altai San again and stopped.  The bathrooms were locked because the power was off.  While using the outhouse, we saw some guys poking sticks into a big transformer out back, and when we got back inside, the power was on again.

We had some fried beef with egg and some steamed bread with Coke and were very happily full.  It cost 8,000 T for our family (about $6.00).  A bus had just stopped before us, so their mugs were all dirty.  So we drank Coke out of bowls.

A while further down the road, we bought 34,750 T of fuel.  By 4:00 pm, we were obviously going down more than up because the driver was coasting the van down all the hills in an effort to save fuel.  I guess he got to keep whatever was left over, so why not?

We came back to the construction detour:
Start: 47.88438, 105.32483
End: 47.89373, 105.50329

We got back to the city at 6:10, and after fighting our way through traffic and dropping off the new Project Manager, made it home at about 7:00 pm.

For photos, see my Facebook pics for “Mongolia – Trip to the Countryside”.

So for the time being, you’ll have to be satisfied with the news that we went to Karate Kid 2 today at the Urgoo Cinema.  English with Mongolian subtitles.

We knew the movie was in town, but we couldn’t remember the name of the theatre (so we obviously didn’t know where it was either).  And we didn’t know the showtimes.

So we texted someone who could tell us the name, and then found the website of the theatre, which had showtimes (thankfully numbers here are the same as our’s, because we couldn’t read much else – see for yourself).  There was a 16:40 showing, so after checking Google Earth and finding the location, we figured we could get there on time.

But first we needed groceries, so Jack & Tommy & I ran down the 5 flights of stairs, past the smoking police officer, and down the hill to the grocery store (dodging traffic and construction equipment), where we bought the following for 13,000 tugruks (just under CAD$10):

• 10 eggs
• 4 big potatoes
• 2 bunches of carrots
• a 1L box of orange juice
• 6 yogurts (Cherry & Berry flavour)
• 1 loaf of bread

Then we ran back up the hill, up the five flights of stairs, past the smoking police officer and the victims of the crime moaning in the stairwell, grabbed our sweaters and womenfolk (Annie & Lynette, and not by the hair) and ran back down the five flights of stairs, past the police (cigarette was done by now) and the victims and the neighbour of the victims who wanted details, and then around the corner and up the hill to the main road.

Dodging cars, we made it alive to the other side, where I stood facing oncoming traffic, raised my outstretched right arm to waist height, and flapped my hand into traffic.  The very first car swung to the curb to pick us up.  (This is how the taxi system works here – there are no taxis because everyone is a taxi.) 

It was a tiny yellow beat up Hyundai Accent, and we all piled in.  I said Urgoo Cinema, the driver nodded, and we took off.  We never reached a very high speed, but after only 10 minutes of dodging potholes, Toyota Land Cruisers, diesel spewing buses, hoards of minibuses, and pedestrians, while paying some, but not much attention, to the rules of the road, we pulled up in front of the theatre.  The guy’s trip odometer said 3.4 km, so I peeled off a 5,000 tugruk note and gave it to him.  The going rate being 500 tugruks per km, he gave me 1,500 back in change, and off we went.

The theatre could have been any modern multiplex theatre back home.  There were 4 theatres, and everything was shiny and computerized.  You could even buy tickets on your Blackberry (see the theatre website for details in Mongolian). The ticket seller spoke enough English that I knew how much to pay her (17,000 tugruks), she handed me the tickets and away we went.  Another 6,000 for popcorn, a can of Miranda Orange (pretty much Orange Fanta, but Jack says Fanta is better), and a can of Mountain Dew (the kind with all the caffeine like in the USA), and we went off to find the theatre.  There was a video arcade, and there were designer-clad young people everywhere, either talking or texting on their mobile phones.

Moments later, a ticket taker opened the theatre, tore her part off our tickets and in we went. The theatre had theatre style seating, really comfortable padded seats that reclined, and arm rests that went up and down between the seats (like on an airplane) with cup holders in the end of them.  A very nice setup.  Obviously new, and obviously professional.

As the on-screen commercials were about to start, a guy showed up and gestured that I was in his seat.  It turned out the funny numbers we couldn’t understand on our tickets were seat numbers – we had assigned seating.  So we moved from Row 8, seats 4-8 to Row 13, seats 3-7, where we should have been.  This was the back row of the theatre – the sight lines were terrific, and the digital surround sound was great.

After the movie, we checked out the bathrooms – busy with lots of people coming and going – just to see what they had done there.  Hands-free sensors on everything, glass tile on the walls, and nice western style toilets to go with it.  I didn’t even see any footprints on the seats or the rims.  (See my Tajikistan blog entries for an explanation – I’ll post the link when I find it.)

Then we went outside and watched some guys thrash around inside clear plastic balls on a large wading pool (they inflated them with a shopvac in reverse and leaf blowers).  Then we crossed the street (6-10 lanes, depending on the mood and volume of traffic at the time) one lane at a time, and made it alive to the other side.  I stepped up to the curb, flapped my hand like a seal flipper, and a guy in a beat up Fiat got to us first. 

I didn’t know how to describe where we were going, so I showed him on the map.  Off we went.  His gas gauge was on empty, but after 3.6 km (he took up right to the door), we were there.  I gave him 4,000 tugruks, got out, climbed five flights of stairs (stopping to observe the quickie repair job on the door that had been done to the door of apartment 115 after the earlier break in (remember those police that were hanging around)), and let ourselves back into our apartment.  We retrieved the boneless chicken breasts (that Lynette bought yesterday from the neighbour’s friend) that we had left thawing in the sun in Annie’s window, and shortly we will eat some fried chicken with potatoes and carrots.  The kids have had enough Chinese food, and it’s time for some comfort food.

So to sum up:

• Taxi to theatre = 3,500
• Movie tickets = 17,000
• Snacks = 6,000
• Taxi to home = 4,000
• Total = 30,500 tugruks (CAD$23.99)

And through it all, we never did lose either water or power all day. A fine day in Ulaanbaatar, with Jackie Chan.

We feel like we barely survived our overnight on the Great Wall, which, when accompanied by the dehydration inducing hike at first light this morning, makes us plenty happy to be back in air conditioned comfort.  We pick up our train tickets today, so we’re off to Mongolia at first light tomorrow.

By tomorrow, I mean Tuesday am local time, which is 14 hours ahead of Saskatchewan.

42 degrees with the humidex today – we guzzled water like there was no tomorrow, and our need of the facilities was not affected.  It just came out through our pores.  That much is just like Niger.  The part that wasn’t like Niger is that we noticed, and our clothes were drenched as a result, and I had to keep wiping sweat off the camera.

Agenda for today was:

1. Tienanmen Square
2. Forbidden City
3. Peking Duck Lunch
4. Visit to the Toy Market
5. Acrobat Show

Lots of fun and fluids had by all, but by suppertime, we were ready to crash, which is what I am going to do now.

We think that what is going to happen is that we’ll post stuff here and then link to it from Twitter, which will link it to Facebook.  So if you’re already using those tools and you are following me (I saw you – don’t think I didn’t see you) or already my Friend, these buttons below may have some meaning for you.  If you don’t know what I’m talking about, ask a 12 year old.  But you can’t ask mine – I’m taking him with me.

Does anybody have any Mongolian tögrög or tugrik lying around?  I could use some, because I like arriving in a place with some of their currency already in my pocket.  Apparently CAD$1.00 (CAD is the international code for the Canadian dollar, which brings a whole new meaning to “printing from your CAD program – if only!) is equal to 1316.8307 tugriks (sign: ₮; code: MNT).  Which means that after you change less than CAD$760 into MNT, you’re a millionaire, and you can leave your CAD printer at home.  It’s lighter.

Gotta go – I need to practice milking horses.

We have plane tickets, train tickets, Mongolian visas, and we’ve looked at Ulaan Baatar on GoogleEarth.  That should about do it, besides the extra large bottle of Imodium we need to pick up.

Actually, we still need visas for our 5 days in China on the way over.  After a lot of searching, we found a Regina travel agent who could help us with that.  Thank you CAA Saskatchewan.

To get a Chinese visa, you need to have someone hand deliver your application and passports to the Embassy in Ottawa, or one of the consulates (Toronto, Calgary, Vancouver).  And they have to show up at precisely the right time with precisely the right amount of payment and enough left over to pay for the parking meter outside for an indefinite period of waiting time.  Then they need to go back 4-5 business days later, deposit sufficient funds in the parking meters again, pick up the passports, and then courier them back to you.

The Mongolian process was much easier – we just couriered them to the Mongolian Embassy in Ottawa, and the next week we got a package back.  However, this is one of those times you wish you were an American – they don’t need visas for Mongolia at all.  They can just show up.  Hopefully the recent opening of a Canadian Embassy in Ulaan Baatar will make a difference.

It is possible that the kids are getting excited about the trip, but we think they have the last day of school on the brain.  That’s next Friday.  Then the older two go off to camp right away for a week, followed by Tommy’s first ever week at camp the week after.  Then after a week at home all together, off we go.

Plus, it is also possible that the idea of fermented mare’s milk (Honey – it’s time to milk the horse again!) and boiled sheep testicles (I hear they’re offal) has them somewhat wary.  And we haven’t even told them about the deep fried scorpions and grasshoppers you can buy on the street in Beijing.  Gotta save some surprises.

In Mongolia, we’ll work with a microfinance NGO that provides small business loans to Mongolians working to support their families, we’ll provide some planning advice to an agribusiness project in rural Mongolia, and work with government officials to improve their assistance to Mongolian businesses looking to connect with North American companies.

More details are coming soon.

Where’s Mongolia?  Click here for a map.

The boys came back oblivious as to who was in their classroom, but Annie knew all the names of the kids in her class, and most of the details of what had gone on during the day.

School starts at 7:30 am, when it is still sort of cool outside, and ends about 2:30 pm, when it is good and hot. We would eat lunch there with the school kids.

During the off hours, we were responsible for getting things organized for the group of 10 people coming from our church toward the end of our stay in Niamey. So we would run around town collecting various groceries and supplies from various places. Cucumbers from that guy on that corner, pineapples over there, and Coke around the corner.

The cheese came from the store known locally as “White Shack”, which unfortunately for us was neither white, nor a shack, nor called “White Shack”. After several tries and several sets of directions, we discovered that “White Shack” was really “Azar’s”, that it was red brick, and that it looked nothing like a shack. It is owned by a Lebanese guy with the nickname “Cobra” who has a ponytail and sits by the till. Here we bought ground beef (much leaner than the lean stuff we buy at home), cheese, mosquito repellant, rice, sugar and a few other things.

Haddad’s is another place that is owned by Lebanese guys. It is close to the Petit Marche (the little market). The trouble is that we didn’t have a map, and the street it is on is one way the wrong way to get there easily. We ended up just driving around the approximate area, trying to drive in the legal direction of each street, and it was just when we gave up and turned back toward the river and the bridge home that we spotted Haddad’s on the right side of the street.

[photo of Jack in Haddad's coming soon - once FTP works again]

We pulled in and ran into its air conditioned comfort. Inside, it was jammed with people and groceries for sale in a space about 2/3rd the size of a 7/11 store back home. It had carts, so we grabbed one and headed into the store. One whole aisle was dedicated to alcohol, including a $1,500 bottle of cognac in a special display. Oenophiles will like the idea of the $5 French wines further down the aisle, but not caring about the booze, we bought large boxes of Foster Clark’s powered drink mixes from Malta, orange juice from Lebanon, 10 frozen chickens from France, and 15 cans of tuna packed in water from Paris.

The amazing thing about the stores here is the number of diverse places things come from. I saw boxes of Wheat Thins marked Product of Canada next to displays of skin whitening soap from Nigeria and a multi-national Coke display of Coke products in cans. Regular Coke entirely written in Arabic from an unidentifiable Arab country. Sprite in French and Arabic, possibly from Lebanon or Morocco. Diet Coke from Indonesia. In another store, regular Coke in 500 mL plastic bottles from Burkina Faso, Diet Coke in plastic bottles from Nigeria, and cans of Coke from Togo (not the town in Saskatchewan).

By comparison, everything we buy in Canada seems to come from one plant in Toronto, or because of packaging rules, gets to be marked as a product of Canada, even though it came from somewhere else. Now that Canada’s getting a new set of packaging guidelines, I’m looking forward to seeing where the stuff I buy really comes from.

Of course, this posting cannot be posted until the power comes back on and powers our Internet connection. Without electricity, we’re back in the pre-electrical era, with laptops whose value can be calculated by their remaining battery life. Soon, we’ll have a bunch of expensive door stops and paper weights.

But here in Niger – oh my goodness, things have changed. Here, the ceiling fan is my best friend, and the faster I can get it to turn the better. It may sound like a DC3 is revving up in the room, but these things create the closest thing to wind chill factor West Africa has to offer. And that’s a good thing.

Now these are not fancy ceiling fans – photo coming soon. But like my economist friends like to say, nothing adds utility like utility. And around here, ceiling fans are a utility. Every room has got one, or ten or twelve. And they’re all going vigorously. And it’s the cold season.

There are some risks, mind you. No jumping is allowed, particularly for tall people. Indoor hockey is out. And you should be careful not to tip your head back too far to get that last drop of Coke out of the glass bottle, because it might be ripped from your hands by an incredible force, and swept by the fan-made gale into the corner of the room. And if the big diesel-powered generators across the river that generate most of this country’s electrical power go out, it won’t be long before the resulting quiet in the room is replace by the sound of rivulets of your own sweat running down onto the floor and creating a hazard for passing children and elderly people. If that’s not utility, I don’t know what is.

There is now no ceiling to my enthsiasm for fans. I might even be their biggest one.

The drawback is that I think you have to be my Facebook friend to view the photos, so you might need to add me as a friend.

If you’ve never heard of Facebook, send a text message to a teenager and ask about it.

Here’s a link to my public Facebook page to get you started.

These photos aren’t mine or in Niger, but they might as well be. They are certainly representative of things we have seen.

Both pics from: http://www.sahara.it/bm/saharaThree/viaggi/resoconti/destinazione-chad.shtml

I shall go first.

The Day According to Brad:

Today, the kids went to school again, as they did yesterday. Tommy joined a grade 2/3 class at Sahel Academy. Annie has joined Miss Blomquist’s (they call her Miss. B. “because it’s easier”) grade 3/4 class. Including Annie, there are 11 students, so they seem glad to have her, and it is nice to see her racing around with the other girls in the 39 degree heat at recess. Jack is helping in Tommy’s class, since he is a trained tutor at home, and we think he’s enjoying it. They seem to be enjoying it enough that they sit with their classmates at lunch – parents don’t seem as important as they did a few days ago.

Lynette helped get more books ready for the new library (when we were here last year, it was just outer walls – now it’s a functioning building with a computer lab, a real library, lots of ceiling fans, and most importantly, quasi-high speed Internet). Yesterday, Lynette was a substitute teacher.

The library has also been my office this last week. I set up in the corner with a live Internet connection, and I’m good to go. The power has only gone out about once a day (to a cacaphony of UPSs squealing), so that’s pretty good.

Lunch is at about noon, and today they finally had some pop we could buy at the same time. I was glad to replace my cup of water with a Coke.

School starts at 7:30 am, before things get too hot, (all Phys Ed classes are early in the morning) and school ends about 2:30 pm. We left at 4 pm, and when we got back to the guesthouse, I must have been staring at a computer too long today, because I fell asleep on my bed and slept for 2 hours. I probably would have kept going, but somebody woke me up so we could go shopping.

We grabbed our case of Coke empties and hopped in the van. Across the bridge, avoid the camel, around the traffic circle, past the fountains, through the two green lights, up the hill past the hospital, avoid the Toyota Landcruiser, around the traffic circle, dodge the Mercedes and fleet of motorcycles, down the street past the Prime Minister’s office, through the broken traffic light, veer right around the curve, through the green light, watch for the water tower on the left, turn in front of the taxi, dodge between the pedestrians, and pull up on the sand on the left where all the crates of Coke are stacked up outside. I hopped out while the kids and Lynette waited in the van.

Open the back of the van so the guy can get the empties, tell him we want a new full case of 24 – 300 mL Cokes and a second case of 24 – 300mL assorted other flavours (Youki, Youki Pineapple, Fanta Fiesta, Fanta Orange, Sprite). Pay the guy sitting on the small box – 7,850 cfa ($19 CDN) for the new case, and 4,250 ($10.27 CDN – $0.43 per bottle) for full bottles in the old case. The difference is the deposit on the plastic crates and the glass bottles, and we should theoretically be able to get that back (on both crates) at the end of our stay. Given the fact that nobody ever has any money (or change), it’s hard to say if that will really happen – we may have to donate the boxes and empties to the guest house. He puts the new ones in the back of the van, and I tip him 100 cfa for his efforts.

During the entire stop, we were swarmed by kids and adults trying to sell us stuff or beg some money from us. A selling small bags of green peas and something else we didn’t want, a guy with phone cards, a Tuareg or Fulani guy with jewelery, a guy in a self-propelled wheelchair (he pedals with his arms), kids begging. We hopped in and drove away carefully so as to not drive over any feet, down the street, past a small restaurant and realized there was a fruit stand next to where we had been stopped and that we wanted some.

So we turned around and went back, parking across the street. This time we all got out and we ran into Nancy from the office (she lives close-by). The guy wanted 1,500 for a pineapple (that’s almost $4!), which was a lot more than the 750 Lynette paid 2 days ago. She got him down to 1,000. She also bought a kilo (they had a scale) of mandarin oranges and some bruised-looking, but pretty good bananas. Besides fruit and vegetables, they also sold small bags of macaroni, but we passed.

We walked back across the street through our crowd of “new friends”, some of whom now called me “mon patron”. Clearly my status has risen – I can’t get my kids to call me their patron.

With a full dump truck on our tail (I wonder how his brakes are?), we headed back toward the river when we realized that we still wanted to buy some “street chickens”. So after the curve, the PM’s office, and the next traffic circle, we veered left, and then took the third exit from the next circle. This took us into the area where the “White Shack” is supposed to be (you know, the one at the end of the street the office is on), but we couldn’t find it. We did notice a white shipping container converted to a store, but it didn’t look like enough of a shack to qualify. We still don’t know if White Shack is the name of the place, or it is just a white shack.

Back up at Tillabery Road, we turned right, because I refuse to drive on the street that goes straight. It’s not paved, and that’s where I got stuck. By now, the evening light was dimming, and we didn’t need that. We drove past the stadium and sports palace (there were people everywhere – there is a rumour that the West African games are on – maybe it’s true) and ended up on a very busy and narrowing street full of people on motorcycles, camels, Landcruisers, dump trucks and ancient Toyota Starlet taxis. We saw one street chicken stand with the flames going strongly, but there was nowhere to stop.

We kept driving, gradually turning right on bigger streets when we could, knowing that somewhere off to the right was downtown and the taller buildings. The trouble is that they are taller, but halfway down to the river, so you really can’t see them from other parts of town that are up higher. Eventually, we found a street we recognized from our drive in from the airport, and we turned right once more back toward downtown. Past the Ministry of Social Services, the Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation, past the lion on the side of the street, past the Mercedes/Mitsubishi dealership, down the hill, around the traffic circle and back over the bridge to familiar territory, all the while dodging the usual suspects and their various forms of transport.

Crossing the river, there were hundreds of birds everywhere, swooping all over the place in the dim sunset. Once one got close enough (to sink its teeth into our necks and suck our blood), we saw they were bats, coming out for the night and feeding on the bugs that like the river. We drove past our turn, looking for some open flames on the side of the road – this is a sign of someone cooking. Nothing, nothing, a rickety table with old whiskey bottles of fuel in them (a gas station), a shipping container converted to a bakery stand (they get deliveries twice a day – this is where I bought the Burkina Faso Coke the other day), the university entrance, nothing, nothing, a pile of bricks laid out to dry (building supply store), stacks of wood and branches cut to equal lengths and sort of straight (a lumber yard), a TOTAL gas station (French company now investing in the Alberta oilsands) with a service bay and a car wash (the street was pulsing with traffic, but nobody was there – diesel is cheaper by the whiskey bottle), an interesting looking fruit stand, to the traffic circle with different rules than the others.

At this traffic circle, the person in the circle has the right of way. At all the others, the person entering the traffic circle has the right of way. I wonder how they decide, and how we’re supposed to know.

We veered right. It was very dark, and some vehicles even had headlights on. Many were mis-aligned, so they tended to shine right in my eyes, making it even harder to see. Eventually we saw what we thought was a chicken stand under a small single fluorescent bulb on the other side of the road. We drove a ways further and found a place to turn around, during which time we passed a brochette stand (meat on a stick), a roasted goat stand, and probably a few that we missed. We pulled to the side of the road when we got back and asked a guy if he had chickens. “Over there,” he said, pointing to the next stand.

So we pulled up and I hopped out into traffic to find out more. The owner came up and I asked him if he had chicken, so he showed me the menu, which was quite visual. The small, scrawny, emaciated chicken that had been butterflied open and roasted was 2,000 cfa, and the bigger skinny chicken roasted to the same perfection was 2,500 cfa. I told him we’d take the big skinny one.

This being a fast food stand, I now had to stand in line behind a well-dressed local lady who I had seen pay her 2,500 cfa and a couple of other guys who might have been there before her. The owner grabbed my chicken by the leg and tossed it over to Knife Guy who hacked it into 2 legs, 2 small breasts, 2 wings, and 2 thighs. Knife Guy tossed the pieces onto the grill, where Grill Guy poked at the pieces as they were finished off. Owner Man got out a small cup of mysterious liquid and painted it on the chicken bits (it turned out to be a BBQ sauce), and then sprinkled grains of some kind of substance all over the meat. This turned out to be a rough salt mix – sort of like a steak spice might be at home.

After a few minutes of cooking and painting and sprinkling and poking, Owner Man grabbed an old cement bag (multiple layers of paper – you know the ones), peeled off a layer, shook it to get the cement off, tore it in half, and proceeded to wrap our chicken in it. The chicken soaked through the paper pretty quickly, and soaked up any extra cement bits. To add structural integrity to the paper-wrapped package, he then placed it in a flimsy black plastic bag like we see everywhere here, and tied it shut. I paid him (exact change only – I didn’t want any small candies or extra chickens to make up the difference) and he handed me the bag.

It was hot, so I handed it off to Lynette through the van window and walked around into traffic to get in. I startled several cyclists as I came around the van to the point that a Tour de France-like domino bicycle collision almost took place. They recovered from shock and their balance and kept going. I got in quickly and started the van. I got the kids to look out the back for any lights or unlit shadows coming up from behind us, and jumped into the traffic as soon as I could. Back to the traffic circle, assume the right of way, take the third exit, back past the TOTAL station, the big box “Home Depot” of sticks and bricks, the university, the bakery stand, the whiskey bottles, and into the compound.

We washed off some pop bottles (they come covered in thick dust from sitting outside) and threw them in the freezer to cool rapidly, hacked up the pineapple (mmmmm – good), found part of an old baguette, put it all on the table and ate it all. The chicken was a bit salty with a spicy-ish finish. There wasn’t a whole lot of meat on the thing, but as usual Jack struggled to remove all the scary (read shiny, tough, fatty, bony, gristly, skin, funny looking) bits, and Tommy just devoured the whole thing without looking at it, sucking on the bones at the end. The pineapple was perfect to cleanse the palate, the choice of the 2009 vintage Coke was a perfect selection, and the baguette was only a little bit rubbery from being in a plastic bag all day. We finished off with a selection of Lifesavers and massive gumballs.

I give it a 4 out of 5. There didn’t seem to be any sand in the entire meal, so I can’t give it a 5 as a perfect west African meal.

The Day According to Lynette:

Worked in the library all day – stamped almost 300 books. These were “new” donated books, which I stamped “Property of Sahel Academy Library” on the inside cover & on page 13. THen I stuck a barcode sticker on the inside cover and covered the sticker with plastic. 300 times woo hoo. It was mindless work, but I got the entire stack done. Now they need to be scanned and catalogued and shelved. They may teach me how to do that on Monday.

For supper I wanted street chicken. I hope to get a bunch for the team to eat next week and I thought we’d better try it out first. The problem is that they only start cooking them at sunset [Ed: this is about 7 pm).

So first we went to the Coke store to return our case of 24 and get two more. We say they're for the team, but I bet we'll have to get more before they come! At the Coke place, there are also some produce stalls and other stuff, but I decided to stay in the car with the kids while Brad did the Coke transaction - bad move. We became sitting ducks for all of the street vendors - phone cards, dates, peas, necklaces, fancy boxes, grapefruits & greeting cards. Plus of course the little beggar boys (I've been told to not give them money because they don't get to keep it).

So once the Coke transaction was done we all got out to look at the fruit. We bought pineapple, 1 kg bananas, and 1 kg oranges for 2,000 cfa (about $5). The guy wanted 1,500 just for the pineapple, but I said "no, c'est trop" so he came down to 1,000. It's more than I paid the other day, but it's still less than his original price, so I'm content.

Then we went off in search of street chickens because it was starting to get dark and we were hungry. We set off in the direction of downtown, hoping for the best and thinking that we might also run across a real store where we could buy some pasta. I thought I knew where it was, but I was wrong. We eneded up a bit lost and in the chaotic traffic around the Grand Marche. We say a few chicken stands, but there was no easy way to get them and Brad didn't feel like causing an accident - so we went on.

Eventually, we found our way back to our side of the bridge and went down the main road to look for chicken. After a few u-turns, we saw some fires. At the first one a man came to the window and I stuck my head out and asked, "Poulet?" He pointed ahead and said, "la bas". So we thanked him and drove ahead a bit. I think he might have had goat meat on his grill. It was something bigger than a chicken.

Brad got out to talk to the chicken man. Basically, they use a barrel or something to contain the fire with a grill on top. They cook the chickens flat (butterflied?) until they're mostly done and then when you say how much you want (the scrawny or the skinny) [Ed: hey - those are my words!] they throw on some sauce and some spices, cut it into pieces and put it back on the grill. When it’s hot, they pull out a piece of paper from an old bag of cement mix (give it a shake), wrap up your chicken and tie it in the ever-present black plastic bag. Funny how most of our plastic bags are white, and a lot of their’s are black – I just realized that.

Then we headed straight home to enjoy our spicy chicken, baguettes from an earlier run to the baker down the street, and our pineapple and bananas. It was all delicious.

Oh, I forgot – when we came back across the bridge, the sun was just setting and we noticed a ton of birds flying over the river – but they weren’t birds, they were bats! So cool! I tried to take pictures, but they’re all small & blurry.

The Day According to Jack [Ed: transcribed from the original Jack-ese - now you too can question the idea of spelling words however you think they should be spelled]:

This evening we went for a drive and we went to the Coke store and traded one box of empty Coke bottles for two more. The Coke is all in glass bottles. Then we went to the store and bought some pineapple, some oranges, and some bananas. They are sooooo good! Then we drove around a bit looking for a guy with a fire! We got lost in Niamey somewhere and evenchually [sic] my dad found out where we were and we went back across the bridge. When we got to the bridge there were “birds” everywhere! Then one flew right near the bridge and I saw that it wasn’t a bird at all it’s wings weren’t that off a bird. The wings were all leathery and more in the shape of that off a bat. Hey a bat that was it was a bat! When we finally found a guy with a fire (witch took about 45 minutes) we pulled over and asked “Poulet?” and the guy said “Le poulet est la bas!” as he pointed next door, apparently he was selling goat meat. Blaaahght! That’s dissgusting. We finally got some chicken and brought it home for supper, it was great! Supper was pineaple, chiken, french bread and pop. For dessert we had bananas, and some candy.

The Day According to Annie:

Today my mom said . . . “let’s go get some streat chicken” so, we went to get some streat chicken. On the way we dropped of the Coke and Sprit glass bottles at the Coka Cola store. and we got some Coke too. then we went to look for some pineapple we went all around the city looking for a pineapple. Finally we find the (pineapple) fruit market. we buy one pineapple, some organs, and bananas. Then we went to buy some streat chicken it took us a long time to find some chicken. When we got on the brige we saw a lot of birds flying over the water! but then one of them came closer to the Brige and I nodist that they were Bats. Hundreend and thowzins of Bats going out for the night! Dad said look for a fire we found one and hade to turn around to park, and we did. my mom stuk her head out of the window and said “poulet?” “le poulet est la bas” answered the man. Then we drove over to the next place. My dad went over to buy some, a little kid was beging for money (for the mosque) [Ed: more on this another time, but it's true] then we went back to the geast house to eat supper.

THE END

The Day According to Tommy:

Today we went for a long drive. And we got lost and we coud not find our way home. First we went to get some coke and some other pops – 2 cases of 24 little glass bottles. We were waiting in the van and there were men trying to sell us stuff through the window. And my mom bought some fruit. When we got to the bribge we thought there wore birds but the wore bats there wore like 3,000 bats it was so hard to count.

[Ed: we weren't lost - we just didn't know where we were]

We hope to add some more photos soon, but we’ve been busy working and it’s hard to drive and take pictures at the same time.

So they’ve been quite good so far, only getting on each others’ (and their parents’) nerves from time to time. One of their video screens on the Lufthansa flight from Calgary to Frankfurt was broken, but they managed to make do with a pair of headsets and by sharing a screen. They watched movies for the entire flight (there was nothing to see out the window – it was an overnight flight), falling asleep only when the screens got shut down for landing.

Being kids, they can also sleep anywhere, and did very well in the airport, as we whiled away a 15 hour stopover in Frankfurt. Between exploring the other terminals and riding the airport LRT train back and forth, we kept ourselves entertained and passed the time.

In many ways, the bigger challenge traveling with kids comes after you arrive. Eventually they’ll find something they like doing, and all they’ll want to do is that one thing over and over again. For our kids, this is play in the (freezing) ocean. (Remember, it’s less than 20 degrees, the water is cold, and there’s a brisk wind coming in off the water. Lynette went in up to her ankles for a few minutes and it took a very long time to get warm again – the kids played in the water for an hour and had to be dragged away.)

So we went back to the beach the next day to be stared at by the locals in their winter jackets, and we went back there again prior to leaving for the airport. Niger is one big beach, but there’s no ocean, so they’ve been adjusting.

The boys have discovered a game on our cell phone they like to play, so it is a useful bribe to get them working on their school work. Today, they are all at school while Lynette does some substitute teaching for some teachers who are away. After so many years of parenting, she is highly skilled at pressing play on VCRs and DVDs, so she’s well qualified to deal with the materials the teachers have planned.