Harbin Ice Festival

Tonight we went to the Ice Festival and when we drove up to all the lit up buildings, i felt like i was at Disney world except it was made of ice. It was so beautiful and amazing how they put all of these buildings together with huge ice blocks hauled in from the river a quarter mile away. This ice festival in Harbin is ranked #2 in the world's greatest ice festivals to see, it truly was awesome! We walked around and took a lot of pictures which i am posting now. They had 20 ice slides in two different areas of the park, the first ones we went to were shorter and you slid down on your butt or stomach. We raced down those a couple times and moved on. They had a restaurant built out of ice and a coffee bar too to warm up in. They had 2 ponds frozen over with one that had seats that looked like mini bar stools with blades on the bottoms and you used ski polls to propel yourself around on. The other was an ice bicycle that had blades in the front instead of a wheel to steer with and a bike tire in the back and you could pedal around the ice. Of course we had a race on that too. After we were done racing around we walked on and saw a white snow fox that this guy had on a table, he wanted money for us to hold it and take a picture with it but no one wanted to be near a animal that may not be tame let alone what kind of diseases it might have.

 

We did find a Bactrian (two humps) camel and for 15 yuan we could ride around on it. I had never had a camel ride and we all paid to do it. The camel was very woolly and was very sweet, its not the kind that spits at you. on the Internet it says that Bactrian camels are native to Mongolia which is the country next door, so maybe its from there. Anyway we moved on to the giant ice slide which was almost the length of a football field. We slid down on a plastic sled and you end up going so fast and its fun, but so many people go on it that at the bottom its rough and to slow down it goes up into a vertical ramp and then you end up crashing down. It was fun but the end sucked, i bit a chunk out of the side of my cheek and was spitting out blood for the next 10 minutes. Never doing that again. But everything else was great i took plenty of pictures of the castles and other building structures. The snow suits that we got as a gift from the Chinese came in handy, we were all very warm in the red suits. And we could all find each other when we wanted to leave! Ha ha. I want to go again later this week if we get time and go down the slides again, not the big one. We also want to go to the snow sculptures, but during the day. 

Tomorrow i have my game at 4pm, Canada vs. Japan, i am really excited to work this because it will be a good game.

I am getting sick of eating Chinese food, so if someone wants to cook me a big burger with cheddar cheese (have not had any cheese since i have been here), pickles, ketchup (haven't had that either), french fries, buffalo chicken wings, and maybe take me out to Fritz's to have some frozen custard, that would be awesome! i miss American food so much! I am not going to eat rice for 6 months!