The End of an Unforgettable Vacation

After a long train ride, I finally arrived in Beijing! 

I love Beijing! Our hostel, Sunrise Hostel, was right next to the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square. 

While in Beijing, I saw a lot of historically significant things. Tiananmen Square was the first place we stopped. Wandering through Tiananmen square was really neat. There wasn't much to do there except take pictures and take pictures with random Chinese people who wanted pictures with us.

I also went to the Forbidden City. I loved the Forbidden City and was grateful that I could go inside and explore it because if I was here 65 years ago I wouldn't have been able to go inside. Crazy, huh! Inside the forbidden city is where the emperor lived along with the empress and all the emperors concubines. Fun Fact: The emperor and empress never lived together except for the first week of their marriage. After that, they lived in separate buildings and the empress would only see him if he wanted to see her. What a marriage... 

The Temple of Heaven is where the emperors would go and make animal sacrifices to heaven. It was a small building but the pattern and colors on the outside were incredible. Pictures do not do it justice! 

The Summer Palace is the Palace that the Dragon Lady, one of the emperors concubines lived. She was clearly his favorite concubine because she had a gorgeous palace all to herself during the summer. Dragon Lady was OBSESSED with pearls and had gowns and all sorts of different clothes made out of them. So, on the way to the Summer Palace we stopped at the pearl factory and got to see a lot of beautiful pearls. At the Summer Palace was the traveling duck! It was a giant Rubber Ducky just chilling in the water. Apparently, this Duck had been all over the world. So it was really cool to get to see and be a part of that experience!

On the way to the Great Wall of China, we made a quick pit stop at the Ming Tombs. This is the place were the Ming Dynasty Emperor and Empress were buried. It was a pretty quick stop, maybe like 45 mins tops there. It was a pretty small area and we just walked down lots of stairs, squeezed through tons and tons of Chinese saw the tombs, took pictures (of course) and squeezed our way back up lots and lots of stairs. It was really cool to see how well preserved the place is. It was also interesting to see that people had thrown money onto the tombs.  

The next stop: THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA. I LOVE THE GREAT WALL. I went to the Mutianyu Section. It was sooooo beautiful. The day I was there it was a pretty foggy day, but it was still so much fun and so gorgeous. Thankfully, we got there a little later in the day so there were hardly any people. :) I WAS ON THE GREAT WALL. I still can't believe it. I was there. I saw it I hiked it. I was on The Great Wall of China. Such an amazing time. My group and I had a bucket list of things to do while there.. such as; gangnam style, twerk, kiss the Great Wall and so on... It was an unforgettable time and I hope that one day I will be able to go back. Sigh, I LOVED IT!  

The final thing Autumn, Brecia, Shelbie and I did was go to a Kung Fu Show. We went with some French Men that we had met during our excursion to the Great Wall. It was so fun hanging out with Armand and Daniel and learning about France as we were waiting for the Kung Fu show to start. The Kung Fu show was so incredible. It told a story about a young boy who left his mother to become a Monk and learned Kung Fu. Kung Fu is so intense and crazy. The show was so entertaining and I enjoyed every minute of it. Thankfully, the whole show was in English with Chinese "subtitles" above the stage. I guess most everyone that see's the production are tourists. After the Kung Fu show, we hit up a Beijing club and danced the night way, at one point we walked into a club next store and we saw a LEGIT ASIAN ROCK BAND. They all had long hair and looked like straight up rockers from the 80's. That was pretty funny and was so fun to listen to and watch them jump around stage. Between the Asian rock band and all the fun filled westerners that we ran into and talked to and danced with, it was an epic night to say the least.

                           <<Armand, Me, Autumn, Brecia, Shelbie, and Daniel>>

Sadly, all too quickly the night ended and before I knew it was on a train back to Zhongshan. I was so sad to leave Beijing and to leave a truly unforgettable vacation but I will never forget all the fun time and memories made. <3 I LOVE CHINA! 

Trains. Trains. and More Trains.

After Leshan, our group took a 19 hour train ride to Xi'an.

Trains in China are very interesting. There are many different options, standing-space, hard seat, hard sleeper, or soft sleeper. In my China Train experiences, I have had a hard seat, hard sleeper and soft sleeper. The seat is an average seat with a table, with people who have standing room only leaning on the chairs and standing in the walk ways. Thankfully, the only time I have ever had a seat was back in June when my Weihai group and I took a 1 hour train from Jinan to Taishan, when we hiked Mt. Tai. However, a few girls in my group ended up getting the hard seats for the 19 hour train ride. They are such troopers, I can't imagine having a seat for 19 hours. The hard sleepers are actually pretty comfortable. There are 3 beds stacked high, with 6 beds in one section. All the different sections are open with no doors. You also can only sit up on the bottom bed, the top 2 beds you can't sit up all the way. The soft sleepers are the most comfortable all around. There are 2 beds stacked high, in which you can sit up in both of them. There are only 4 beds to a room and there is a door, also you can control the lights, which is really nice. The soft sleepers were basically just like the trains I took when I was living in the Ukraine.

The train bathrooms are generally a squatter with a bar that you can hold onto, because lets face it, its hard enough to use a squatter, now imagine using one on a bumpy moving train. The bathrooms range from awful and disgusting and really smelly, to not that bad with just a slight smell. Also, when you flush it just falls onto the tracks. Kinda gross, but welcome to China. ;P There are a few rare times where there have been a Western Toilet, and those are always a nice surprise. :)

Magical Bathroom: 

Xi'an: Home of the Terracotta Warriors. I saw the Terracotta Warriors back when I was in China for the first time, so I waited in a Subway (yes the American restaurant chain) with every ones bags as all my girls went in to see them. Don't get me wrong, the Terracotta Warriors are really amazing, but I felt like it was a one time thing to see and that I could save that money and spend in on something that I haven't done before. But, here are some pictures that I took back in April.

After my girls met up with me again, we went souvenir shopping. It is seriously so much fun to barter and to see how low you can get different things for. I don't wanna brag or anything, but I am pretty good at bartering I got everything that I wanted for the price that I wanted to get it for, it's so funny to me when I state my price and the shopkeepers call me "crazy.. you crazy", so I just state my price again and tell then that it's so expensive (in Chinese) and then if they won't give it to me and I know that I can find the exact same item from someone else for the price I want, I just leave.. and there have been a lot of times that the shop keepers literally run after me saying "ok, ok" ;).. and if not, I always end up finding the same item for the price I want it for. I love it, it's such a rush.

After spending the day in Xi'an, we left that evening on another train to Beijing! This one was only 13 hours, a little better than the last train ride. Here's a happy little reminder from the sign above the sink on the train. 

Next stop: Beijing!

Monks Have Cell Phones

After I got back to Zhongshan, we had 3 full days of teaching and then off we went on Vacation number 2! Then off the week long vacation I went. Stop number one, Leshan! After taking all sorts of different ways of transportation, we eventually made it to Leshan. I loved every minute spent in Leshan. One of the adventures was taking taxis, as always in China because hardly anyone knows a good amount of English. Our taxi driver was no exception. One thing I should mention about this taxi is that in taxis they generally have some sort of identification and certification on the dashboard that states they are a legal taxi driver with their picture. Well about 5 minutes into our drive, I look at the certification picture and then at our driver and it definitely wasn't the same guy. I pointed at the picture then at him and he just started laughing and laughing and laughing, which caused me and the two other girls (Shelbie and Autumn) to laugh nervously... I wasn't too worried because he was pretty excited that he was driving us, until he made a random phone call. I got slightly nervous that maybe he was taking us to some random place to die or something dramatic and crazy like that, but that wasn't the case. A few minutes later, another taxi driver, who I guess was his friend, pulled up next to our taxi and were hootin and hollerin at us and kept saying "BEAUTIFUL *insert random Chinese* club, good *insert more random Chinese*" I wasn't really sure what exactly they wanted, but I didn't want to say yes or encourage them too much because I was just worrying about getting to our hotel. Turns out, we think the taxi driver just wanted to show us off to his friends.So, no worries, we thankfully made it to our hotel safe and sound.  And had an amazing couple of days in Leshan. 

The highlight of Leshan was The GIANT Buddha. The Leshan Giant Buddha is the largest Buddha in THE WORLD, towering 71m, with his 14.7m head and 24m shoulders. This thing was amazing and I cannot get over how big it is. I loved it.

After seeing the Giant Buddha, we started to walk over towards The Oriental Buddha Theme Park. While walking around, I got pretty excited because I saw some monks, of course I took some "look! hurry get them in the background" pictures, but then they agreed to take a picture with me. After I took some pictures with them, they pulled out their cell phones and took some pictures of us! I didn't know monks have cell phones! That was really funny to me. 

Also, at one point we saw a guy holding a monkey that was in a costume. It was so cute and I walked over to get a picture of the guy holding the monkey and the monkey hopped right onto me! I GOT TO HOLD A REAL ALIVE CUTE MONKEY! The monkey had his tongue stuck out at me in most of the pictures but it was so cute and so much fun to get to hold it. 

There was also this adorable little guy holding onto some bamboo. 

The Oriental Theme Park is basically just a giant park full of a lot of different Buddha's. The park houses about 3000 Buddha statues, big and small. It was so neat to walk around that area and to see all the many different Buddhas. 

Another fun yet kinda scary about Leshan was that since it surprisingly isn't a huge tourist spot for westerners, a lot of restaurants didn't have a menu with English. Usually we can get by because a lot of places in China at least have pictures of the food and we can just point at something that looks good. Well, unfortunately, beside places right next to the Giant Buddha. There were not any pictures and it just had Chinese character. Autumn just picked something random off the menu, I, however, did a lot of charades and even drew a picture to let the girl know that I wanted Potatoes and Rice (thankfully I knew how to say rice in Chinese already, and have since learned how to say potato so I wont have to go struggle so much to get some good food).

Sometimes it can be pretty tough to communicate with Chinese people who don't know any English, but thankfully, they are all super nice and try their hardest to understand what I want or what I need. I can only imagine how frustrating it must be to have to try and deal with me! I am after all in their country, and I can hardly speak their language. I'm grateful for all the nice and caring Chinese people who help me out and some who even go out of their way to try and help. I know that in the US a lot of people get upset when people from different countries can't communicate, and I can even say, shamefully, that in the past I have uttered the words and thought the thoughts of, "well, they are in our country, they should know how to speak English". I now am really ashamed that those thoughts ever crossed my mind and all I can say is once again, I am so grateful for the caring and nice Chinese people who help me. I know for a fact that in the future when ever the opportunity presents itself, however tough it may be, I want to help people who can't speak English with whatever they may need. And, I hope that others will do the same. One of the main things that I have learned from all my travels is that people, no matter where they are from, appreciate nice people and wouldn't the world be a better place if we all were just a little nicer and tried to help each other out just a little bit more. Food for thought. Anyways, Leshan was an amazing place to start our vacation.

Here is a picture of me and my sista-friend in front of one of the Buddhist Temples where they are burning incense. I'm so grateful Autumn is here experiencing China with me. I am so glad that we ended up being sisters and that we are such good friends. She has been such a huge help in keeping me sane with all my crazy head teaching duties. I have had so much fun while here, and she is definitely a huge part of that. She is beautiful and smart and one of the most amazing people I know. Sorry gentlemen, she is about to serve an 18 month LDS mission in Xalapa, Mexico. Once we get back from China of course. ;)  

Escaping a Typhoon

So time has flown by but, September 19-22, was my first vacation time this semester! My group and I decided that we would make a trip up to Yangshou and Xingping for the weekend. However, what started as a 4 day Vacation had turned into a 6 day vacation... Typhoon Usagi hit the city I'm teaching in this semester and the ILP directors did not want us to travel back to Zhongshan until the storm had passed and we could see how much damage had been done. We were originally suppose to leave Sunday Morning.... And we ended up leaving Tuesday Morning. An extra two days on vacation, was a pleasant surprise, but I'm just grateful that the storm wasn't as terrible as it was predicted to be and that me an my group are safe and sound.
<< Picture of my group and our backpacks ready for the weekend >>

So Yangshou.... Yangshou is a gorgeous town. I love it. We stayed at West Lily Hotel/Hostel, the owners are the nicest people and helped hooked us up with some amazing deals to go and do all the things we wanted to do while here in Yangshou. On Wednesday night, my group and I took a sleeper bus. Sleeper Buses are pretty cool. I think I prefer taking a sleeper train because I am too tall for the bed on the bus and I slept cuddling with my backpack... But it was a fun experience and I'll probably end up taking more sleeper buses during my adventures so I just make the best of the sleeping conditions, take some extra drowsy Dramamine and knock out for the ride. Haha Once we arrived in Yangshou, we took some motorcycle taxis to our hotel.. And even though the hotel was closer than expected and the taxi driver ripped us off and made us pay 15 yuan (for two people) I didn't really mind because the bus dropped us off at a random gas station and not at the bus station and I only had directions to the hotel from the bus station.. So basically, I didn't mind paying the motorcycle $2.50 for getting us to the hotel quickly and saving us a lot of stress and we probably never would of found the hotel with them.. Plus it was 4 am when we arrived and I was just ready to get to a bed and get some good sleep.

So, once we got to our hotel/hostel. We all knocked out for a couple hours and Thursday was an amazing day. Once we all woke up, we rented some bikes from the hotel and biked through the country side of Yangshou to the Mud Caves. It was a beautiful ride and the Mud Caves were really cool. We got an English Speaking tour guide who walked us through the caves and pointed at different stalagmite and stalactite and asked us to "use our imagination" when she was explaining what it looked like. There were a few buddha ones and some turtles and "maternal love" and some of them looked more like "father love" according to our  tour guide. Yeah I'll let y'all figure out what those ones looked like...

Anyways, part way through the cave there was a rebirth hole... Basically it was a tiny hole that you crawl through and when you come out the other side you have been reborn.. It was intense.. And not everyone had to do it.. But Autumn, Annemarie and I all got down on our hands and knees and, at the end, pushing ourselves on our stomachs to make it out... It was hard. But I did it with only a few battle wounds..
After that part, we finally made it to the mud part. We all jumped right it and covered ourselves in the mud. Autumn and I went all the way under and got completely covered in Mud... Who knew playing in mud would be so much fun. ;) 

After the Mud Bath, we rinsed off and in the next part of the cave there were some hot springs. It was nice and relaxing and the perfect temperature for a hot spring. :) 

After we left the Mud Caves, we grabbed some grub and then started biking back to our hotel. On the way to the Mud Caves we took the long country road way. However, on the way back, we took the short more in the town way. So, on the way back back we saw some people rock climbing and we pulled over to see how much it was and what the big deal was. Autumn and I decided, what the heck why not?! I have never in my life been legitimately on the side of the mountain rock climbing, I've only ever done rock climbing at the little fake
things at the fair and what not.. And have never been able to make it to the top.. So I was really nervous and was kinda afraid that I would fail within the first 30 seconds and have wasted the money in even trying.. But that wasn't the case. It was intense holding onto the mountain and maneuvering my way up to the top but it was easier than I thought it would be and before I knew it I was almost to the top. But the higher I got the harder it became with less places to grab and pull myself up.. But with some guidance of the Asian guy holding onto my dear life, by they ropes, I made it, donged the dong, and had everyone watching clap and cheer for me as I descended down the mountain. It was a great feeling of accomplishment and I definitely want to do more rock climbing in the future.

Later that night, after a good nap, we hit the town and explored West Street. West Street is the popular street with tons of restaurants and shops. We ate some dang good western food and bartered our socks off. We also went to a Kissing Fish Spa! When I lived in Weihai, I laid in a pool full of the kissing fish and had them nibble on my whole body, but I had never done just my feet and I was excited to show my group what it was all about. It tickled soooooooooooo much, but after about a minute I got used to it and got over the fact that there were little fish nibbling the dead skin off my feet. It felt good and my feet were super soft after. 

The next day, Friday. We went to The Longji Rice Terraces. It was my second time going because I went to Guilin, the rice terraces and Xingping when I went on vacation with my Weihai group.... But not Yangshou.. Anyways, it was a long day we took the 3 hour bus ride there and then spent a few hours at the terraces, which were gorgeous. This time I spent more time in a Village and on the outskirts of the terraces but I still saw some gorgeous views and ate some bamboo rice. Basically they cook the rice inside bamboo. It was pretty delicious. :)

<< Rice Terraces and the Village >>

<< Bamboo Rice >>

Saturday and Sunday, we spent in my favorite little village. Xingping. I love Xingping. It's such a majestic, enchanting little fishing village. We stayed in This Old Place Hostel, which I stayed in last time as well. It's such a rustic, urban and adorable hostel with super friendly staff and really delicious brick fired pizza... Soooo good. 

While in Xingping, we took bamboo rafts down the Li River.
It was so much fun and the views were AMAZING. Seriously, I can't get enough of the mountains here. At one point, we stopped off onto some man made rocky islands in the middle of the river and I got to be a cormorant fisherman. Basically, I just got to hold some cormorant birds on a stick.. so I guess technically I didn't take the birds to go fishing, but still it was a neat experience. We also hiked up one of the mountains to catch the sunset and caught some even more AMAZING views. The hike was incredibly difficult, but SO WORTH IT. The view of Xingping, the river and the sunset were breathtaking. Before leaving Xingping, we ventured across the river and walked for about an hour, with really crappy directions, and after doing charades for a bit found what we were looking for. The Nunnery/Monastery. It was actually pretty creepy. A random chinese monk guy came out and was EXTREMELY HAPPY and kept motioning at us and then turning in a circle.. I'm pretty positive he wasn't all there.. but, It was really funny, and why we followed him, I don't really know. We followed him into a cave behind the place and we saw a lot of Buddha Idols and some bats. We then walked through the main area of the Nunnery, it was really old and run down and it was basically just a lot of idols and we even got to see some legit monks, so that was pretty neat. After that interesting experience, we headed back to the hostel, had one last amazing pizza and headed back to Yangshou.

<< Bamboo We Found Leaning on the Path >> 

 << Some Monks at the Nunnery/Monastery >> 

<< Our Kinda Creepy Guide >>

The next day, Monday, in Yangshou, we didn't do much. None of us budgeted for an extra few days on vacation, having to pay for our food and hotel and what not, so we basically just napped and chilled that whole day. That night, we went to get some dinner and ran into a few other China ILPers from our city, just in a different group. They were shocked to find out that we had been clubbing yet, so we went club hopping. IT WAS SO MUCH FUN. I already always feel like a celebrity because people are constantly taking pictures with me or of me, but nothing compares to going clubbing and having people cheer for you while you're dancing and having random drunk Chinese, Men and Women, want to dance with you and offer you free shots and beer. We didn't drink, and it wasn't a big deal to the people offering it to us. The clubs loved us and it was so much fun to dance and laugh. The clubs were basically just a bar with a bunch of small circle tables all around with a really small elevated dance floor, some even had a pole. It was tons of fun and even though I was dressed in a T-shirt and shorts and was pretty wet because it had been raining, it didn't matter. That was a great way to end a great vacation. That evening, after we got home, we got permission from the ILP directors that it was safe to travel home as soon as possible. We hopped on a sleeper bus the next morning, and after a longggggggg ride, watching weird Chinese movies and with a bus driver who beeped his horn every 5 seconds, we made it back safe and sound to Zhongshan. Sad to leave Yangshou and such a great weekend, but happy to be back and ready to teach the next day.