The Welkers

As you may know back last December Jake decided he wanted to take the Megacities/Megastructures class that BYU has. This class is a mixture of Senior Civil Engineering students and the Grad School Civil Engineering students, they have lots of projects, presentations, and as part of the class they spend a little over 2 weeks traveling around China studying some of their buildings, bridges, transportation, visiting with the companies that built them, and spending time giving the presentations and working with students in the engineering programs at some of the Universities over there. The only hitch is you have to apply to actually get into the class. So he turned in his application, even though I was a little skeptical (and secretly hoping he didn't get accepted a little...) but then he did! I was really excited for him to have this experience, but not excited for him to leave me for two weeks! (I know my Military Wife friends are rolling their eyes now...I'm a baby. I know it.) So Spring semester came and Jake became crazy busy with this class, for the 4 weeks of the class before they went to China he spent every spare hour, until 2 am pretty much every night, at campus in the Lab working on their presentations for Beijing and Tongji Universities. They finally finished the day before they flew out. So I got him for almost 24 hours before he left. After 2 weeks in China they came back and spent the rest of the time finishing their Senior Design Project that was also part of the class. Which meant more 2-3 am nights on campus and no husband again. BUT the good news is he finished last week! AND his group got 100% on their Senior Design Project, I know right? Awesome. He even got an e-mail from his professor saying that they went "above and beyond". I am so proud of him. Just one more semester and he will officially be a Civil Engineer. Anyway, the point of this post was not entirely to brag about my husband, which I reserve the right to do every now and then, but also to share with you his experience in China. I missed him so much, but after talking to him while he was there, hearing his stories since he got home, and seeing all of his pictures, I can't believe I was even a little skeptical of him doing this. It was such an awesome experience! And the silk robe and fresh water pearl necklace/earrings I got out of it weren't bad either :) The little one got a few silk Kimono-type robes and dresses. She is gonna be a cutie. Anyway, here is Jake's trip to China...

First stop: Beijing

The Great Wall of China

The Temple of Heaven

Outside of the Temple of Heaven there are all kinds of elderly people exercising...They have balance beams and all kinds of stuff for them to exercise! Kinda funny. This is a very flexible lady, Jake's other favorite was the 70 year old "hacky sacker" (not sure how to spell that...) It is pretty funny.

The Forbidden City

In Tienanmen Square (Gate to the Forbidden City in the background)

The Bird's Nest (National Stadium)

The Water Cube

Beijing City Planning Museum

Beijing University of Technology (Civil Engineering Department)

Parkview Green

Beijing's Tallest Skyscraper

Tienanmen Square

When you are a civil engineer I guess you take pictures like this...
(Jake speaking: Let me just say this hinge is the biggest hinge I've ever seen! It keeps the stresses in the building from getting too high from wind loads and seismic activity)

Beijing Airport Terminal 3

Next Stop: Tianjin

Tianjin's Tallest Skyscraper

The Tianjin Eye Ferris Wheel. This is an almost 400 foot Ferris Wheel built over the Hai River there. I think I would've puked on it....

An arch-suspension bridge

Next Stop Yichang

Three-Gorges Dam construction equipment

The Three Gorges Dam

The 2nd largest Dam in the world, but the largest power capacity Dam.

The world's tallest bridge pier

The translation over there is TERRIBLE, Jake has so many pictures of signs that they have translated that are completely wrong. This is one of our favorites :)

Next Stop: Shanghai

Tongji University

Giving his presentation

Jake's Chinese contacts (left-Yichiang Zou, right- Siyu Sun)

Shanghai Acrobat Show

So getting me one of these toilets!

Street food (not sure what kind of meat it is...haha)

The World Financial Center observatory...the tallest one in the world

The Oriental Pearl Tower

This was one of Jake's very favorite places. Once again, I would have not done well...The floor of this building is glass...and it is almost 300 meters tall...NO thanks!

The World Expo Center

This building is going to be over 600 m tall when it is done

Next Stop: Guangzhou

Pearl River Tower

In the Canton Tower (radio tower) 108th floor, 433.2 m high

Shenzhen:

A factory that they toured, the women working here make all those computer cords that come with your Chinese Electronics.

The Last Stop...Hong Kong:

Doing an Endowment Session at the Hong Kong Temple

The International Commerce Center.

This was Jake's building that he was in charge of researching. They went to the observatory deck, the 100th floor....which still isn't the top of the building! Then there are another 18 floors on top of that that is a Ritz Carlton hotel. Pretty impressive....

A church building with several chapels and offices

The International Finance Center Building 2...this is the one Batman jumped off of in The Dark Knight.

Overall it was a very educational and rewarding trip. He made lots of new friends, and learned more than he could've in classroom.
After they got back the professors organized a pizza party for all of the wives to come and meet them and watch this video of their trip. One of the students that went made it, and he did an incredible job. It is really good. I tried multiple times to upload on here, and to YouTube, but it is too big and I could not get it to work. But you can watch the video here.
Enjoy!

A few weeks ago I threw a bridal shower for my good friend, and Jake's long time family friend, Christy Allen. I was really excited to do an outdoor Spring shower, I checked the weather weeks in advance, made sure everything would be perfect....Well the weather had something else in mind and as soon as Jake and I finished getting everything set up outside, we got a little surprise and it started pouring rain. Ruined. Everything. We were able to grab all of the food and get it inside before it was ruined, so we were able to eat still! But everything else was a loss. At least Christy got to see it first! But we moved everything inside, ate, talked, opened presents, and had a lot of fun anyway!