Here are a bunch of posts mushed together. Its been hard to find time to post lately so I've been writing in a note and saving it. Sorry for the lengthyness.
Yangshuo!!! This vacation has been soo much fun!! We started off on a 12 hour sleeper bus (that I almost missed) to get here. That was quite the experience let me tell you. The beds are tiny! And they were so squished together and the bus reeked. I was on a top bunk up front which is where all the smokers were so I was dying. That's one of the things I hate most about china..you can smoke anywhere you want. Even on a bus. So I ended up moving to the back of the bus to sleep half the night in the aisle and the other half on hayden's leg :P Needless to say I didn't get much sleep that night ha. We arrived at like 6am and then rented bikes and went bridge jumping...awesome! The bridge was about 10 meters high! That's like 30 or 40 feet, so high! Some of the guys were doing flips and dives into the water but I was too scared to try from that high and risk flopping ha. After the long bike ride back we went to the kissing fish spa. Extremely ticklish!!! I couldnt stop laughing! When we got back, the hostel owner ken (who is super nive and funny) had lots of snacks waiting for us. Since it was moon festival the first things we got were mooncakes...yay...my favorite. We also had snails and grapefruit and green oranges. The snails were nasty, but the grapefruit was delicious and so were the oranges!! :)On friday, we went to the mud caves!! Those were one of my favorite things we've done so far. We went on a short little cave tour that led us to the pool of mud. Pretty cool, they had it all lit up with lights along the way. The mud was like 3 feet deep and super thick. We could just float right on top of it! Weird but cool! I didn't get any pictures though because I didn't take my phone into there, sad. We went to the river after that and played around for a while And then ate the most delicious donuts I've ever eaten. We also got some giant ice cream cones from a little shop on our street. We also got ice cream from mcdonalds and then they gave us free minature ice cream cones afterwards haha..but you can never have too much ice cream right? :)
I love yangshuo. Its seriously one of the prettiest places I've ever been to. We woke up on saturday morning and found out that there was a huge typhoon coming to zhongshan and around the area where we live, so we were told we had to stay here until the ILP staff said it was safe. Not that I'm complaining! It's been so much fun :) Our four day vacation ended up being a week long vacation! So we came home for two days after yangshuo and then left on vacation again to beijing. Don't get me wrong I love vacation, but this much this close together is crazy! Sometimes you just need a vacation from vacation! Ha
Twenty one hour standing ticket train ride to beijing...craziest thing I've ever experienced! It started when we got to the train station to check in. There were soooo many people in line and standing all around you. That's something I've learned about china. Nobody waits in line. Everyone just pushes through no matter who was there first. Once we finally made it inside the station, we waited for like an hour because our train was late.
The first couple hours on the train were the most awful ones of my life. Seriously worst thing ever. I wanted to cry. We walked onto the train and we were packed like sardines in the little space and then squished into the aisles between some chinese people. I thought maybe I could just sit on my suitcase in the aisle but every ten seconds someone walks by or drags a cart through the selling food. So i stood for about two hiurs squished..And it reeked and it was hot..just not fun at all. Thankfully, we made some friends on the train. They were so nice and friendly. They knew some english so we could communicate pretty well and played some charades ha. Only one of them had an english name so we got to name the rest of them! Their names were jeff, harry, joe, and evan. We played card games with them and sang songs and they gave us food too! And they let us sit in their seats!! Nicest guys ever :) They were all so polite and would stand just so we could sit down. Very chivalrous.
First day in Beijing we went to the emperor's palace. We saw all the huge buildings and the insane amount of detail that went into every aspect of them. Definitely had the best hostel room as well, me melissa, brooke, kyle, and hayden. The five amigos. We did everything together as you can tell by the pictures haha I love them :) They're like family to me already. I'm gunna miss eveyone here when these four months end. Its been going by sooo fast! I can't believe its october! We're gunna have to have a reunion sometime after we get home.
Best day in china thus far. The Great Wall. Amazing!!!! We rented a bus to drive us all there because it was about an hour and a half away from our hostel, but it ended up being a tour so we stopped at lots of places not just the wall. It was cool we just weren't expecting it. We stopped by this chinese tea house and they gave samples of tea to everyone..I just fed mine to john cuz I didn't want it. After that, our tour guide, cindy, took us to the birds nest (part if the Olympic stadium). We didn't stay long though because it was pouring on us and we didn't have time to go inside so we took a few pictures outside it and then left. We stopped again at this pottery making place. They showed us how they made the copper designed vases..it was a lot more work than I thought. They individually cut and shape each copper wire to make the designs on every single vase, super cool. After a quick stop for lunch, we were finally off to the great wall!! We rode a lift up to the top and then explored for about an hour and rode the tobaggans down. The tobaggans were awesome!! They went so fast! The only problem was that i was stuck behind a couple of slow asians so i had to keep stopping but still so much fun! :) I can't even begin to tell you how gorgeous it was there! The pictures don't do it justice but they give you an idea. It was weird because since we were up in the mountains it was actually really clear with blue skys and gorgeous weather instead of gross smog. That night we went to an acrobat show. I thought it was gunna be kinda lame, but I was wrong! It was so cool! The next day we went to tienamen square which was super busy. It took more than an hour to walk two blocks! There were sooo many people, mainly because it was the national holiday while we were there. Since it was so crowded, we decided to just go to the pearl market and buy a few things instead of get lost in a sea of people and not be able to get anywhere. I still don't like shopping but it was a little more exciting when we got to bargain for cheaper ha. We found this ice cream place on the way home that gave you double decker ice cream cones stacked on top of each other. You could get up to 10 cones stacked so of course, we did! Delicious!! I think I've finally found some people who like ice cream almost as much as I do..and that's saying something! At night, we played games on the rooftop which was way fun! It was freezing though!! Its actually kinda cold in beijing as opposed to back in zhongshan where its 200ยบ all day and night long. It was a nice break from the heat.
Our last day in beijing :( Melissa and I wanted to trade our tickets to xian with a couple of the guys from kaiyin group who were staying in Beijing longer but it didn't work out. We tried to get it changed at the station that morning but they said we couldn't do it and the train people don't speak english very well so they were pretty much useless anyways. So that was a little bit of a bummer that we didn't get to stay longer in beijing but im sure xian will be fun too :) We spent our last day at the olympic stadium. We explored the birds nest and saw the Olympic rings and wall of olympians names. Then we had our last supper before the train ride. We ate at a cheap dumpling place down the road from our hostel that we found the other day. Its delicious food and super cheap. Needless to say, we spent a lot of time there in the past few days haha. Pretty successful day :) Im sitting on the train to xian right now..did I mention I hate trains? Three more hours and then I can get off this gross, smelly thing. Thank goodness.
Xian: On saturday we went to the terracotta warriors. It wasn't the coolest thing i've been to here but still impressive. Seeing right in front of your eyes the things you've learned about in history classes all those years(okay the things we were supposed to learn about) was pretty interesting. After exploring the terracotta army, we went to this food street with tons of little street vendors and tried fried bananas, pineapple porridge stuff, rice ice cream, meat on a stick, and some fry bread tostada type thing with some weird stuff inside. They were all yummy, the meat was a little funky but not bad. I think it was lamb, but you never really know here :P We woke up at 7am sunday morning and took a 28 hour train ride back home. Longest trip of my life. The journey back was 36 hours total. We didnt get home to our apartment until 7pm monday night because we had to catch a few other metros and buses back to kaiyin from the main train station. Thank goodness for movies and nice chinese men who switched us seats.
Since coming to China, i've realized there are a lot of simple things that I took for granted back in the states, so I've started a little list of things that I'm thankful for:
Toilet paper. And regular toilets too for that matter. I honestly don't mind squatters that much except for the fact that they are so nasty and dirty. If they were clean I wouldn't even mind using them but alas, it seems hardly anything here in china is clean.
Traffic enforcement. I know, I know.I never thought I'd say I'm grateful for traffic laws either. But after driving through china streets, I'm glad we have enforcement.
Wards. I miss having a ward family. It's weird having to skype in for church every week and then there only being about 30 of us total. I guess I was just spoiled back at home with such a huge ward.
Cold drinking water. Whenever we go out to eat, we're served boiling hot water to drink(even at some of the hostels we stay at). In beijing, we would fill our water bottles up before bed and one night it melted Melissa's bottle because it was so hot!
Soap. You would think that soap would be a given next to a sink in the bathroom. Apparently it's not.
Milk. I just miss normal, cold, cows milk. There's no such thing here. Or If there is, I haven't found it yet.
Lines. I can't tell you how appreciative I am of a simple, orderly line of people. Nobody waits in lines here. There are just mobs of people and if you want to get to the front, you have to push your way through and be aggressive or you'll never make it.
Yangshuo!!! This vacation has been soo much fun!! We started off on a 12 hour sleeper bus (that I almost missed) to get here. That was quite the experience let me tell you. The beds are tiny! And they were so squished together and the bus reeked. I was on a top bunk up front which is where all the smokers were so I was dying. That's one of the things I hate most about china..you can smoke anywhere you want. Even on a bus. So I ended up moving to the back of the bus to sleep half the night in the aisle and the other half on hayden's leg :P Needless to say I didn't get much sleep that night ha. We arrived at like 6am and then rented bikes and went bridge jumping...awesome! The bridge was about 10 meters high! That's like 30 or 40 feet, so high! Some of the guys were doing flips and dives into the water but I was too scared to try from that high and risk flopping ha. After the long bike ride back we went to the kissing fish spa. Extremely ticklish!!! I couldnt stop laughing! When we got back, the hostel owner ken (who is super nive and funny) had lots of snacks waiting for us. Since it was moon festival the first things we got were mooncakes...yay...my favorite. We also had snails and grapefruit and green oranges. The snails were nasty, but the grapefruit was delicious and so were the oranges!! :)On friday, we went to the mud caves!! Those were one of my favorite things we've done so far. We went on a short little cave tour that led us to the pool of mud. Pretty cool, they had it all lit up with lights along the way. The mud was like 3 feet deep and super thick. We could just float right on top of it! Weird but cool! I didn't get any pictures though because I didn't take my phone into there, sad. We went to the river after that and played around for a while And then ate the most delicious donuts I've ever eaten. We also got some giant ice cream cones from a little shop on our street. We also got ice cream from mcdonalds and then they gave us free minature ice cream cones afterwards haha..but you can never have too much ice cream right? :)
I love yangshuo. Its seriously one of the prettiest places I've ever been to. We woke up on saturday morning and found out that there was a huge typhoon coming to zhongshan and around the area where we live, so we were told we had to stay here until the ILP staff said it was safe. Not that I'm complaining! It's been so much fun :) Our four day vacation ended up being a week long vacation! So we came home for two days after yangshuo and then left on vacation again to beijing. Don't get me wrong I love vacation, but this much this close together is crazy! Sometimes you just need a vacation from vacation! Ha
Twenty one hour standing ticket train ride to beijing...craziest thing I've ever experienced! It started when we got to the train station to check in. There were soooo many people in line and standing all around you. That's something I've learned about china. Nobody waits in line. Everyone just pushes through no matter who was there first. Once we finally made it inside the station, we waited for like an hour because our train was late.
The first couple hours on the train were the most awful ones of my life. Seriously worst thing ever. I wanted to cry. We walked onto the train and we were packed like sardines in the little space and then squished into the aisles between some chinese people. I thought maybe I could just sit on my suitcase in the aisle but every ten seconds someone walks by or drags a cart through the selling food. So i stood for about two hiurs squished..And it reeked and it was hot..just not fun at all. Thankfully, we made some friends on the train. They were so nice and friendly. They knew some english so we could communicate pretty well and played some charades ha. Only one of them had an english name so we got to name the rest of them! Their names were jeff, harry, joe, and evan. We played card games with them and sang songs and they gave us food too! And they let us sit in their seats!! Nicest guys ever :) They were all so polite and would stand just so we could sit down. Very chivalrous.
First day in Beijing we went to the emperor's palace. We saw all the huge buildings and the insane amount of detail that went into every aspect of them. Definitely had the best hostel room as well, me melissa, brooke, kyle, and hayden. The five amigos. We did everything together as you can tell by the pictures haha I love them :) They're like family to me already. I'm gunna miss eveyone here when these four months end. Its been going by sooo fast! I can't believe its october! We're gunna have to have a reunion sometime after we get home.
Best day in china thus far. The Great Wall. Amazing!!!! We rented a bus to drive us all there because it was about an hour and a half away from our hostel, but it ended up being a tour so we stopped at lots of places not just the wall. It was cool we just weren't expecting it. We stopped by this chinese tea house and they gave samples of tea to everyone..I just fed mine to john cuz I didn't want it. After that, our tour guide, cindy, took us to the birds nest (part if the Olympic stadium). We didn't stay long though because it was pouring on us and we didn't have time to go inside so we took a few pictures outside it and then left. We stopped again at this pottery making place. They showed us how they made the copper designed vases..it was a lot more work than I thought. They individually cut and shape each copper wire to make the designs on every single vase, super cool. After a quick stop for lunch, we were finally off to the great wall!! We rode a lift up to the top and then explored for about an hour and rode the tobaggans down. The tobaggans were awesome!! They went so fast! The only problem was that i was stuck behind a couple of slow asians so i had to keep stopping but still so much fun! :) I can't even begin to tell you how gorgeous it was there! The pictures don't do it justice but they give you an idea. It was weird because since we were up in the mountains it was actually really clear with blue skys and gorgeous weather instead of gross smog. That night we went to an acrobat show. I thought it was gunna be kinda lame, but I was wrong! It was so cool! The next day we went to tienamen square which was super busy. It took more than an hour to walk two blocks! There were sooo many people, mainly because it was the national holiday while we were there. Since it was so crowded, we decided to just go to the pearl market and buy a few things instead of get lost in a sea of people and not be able to get anywhere. I still don't like shopping but it was a little more exciting when we got to bargain for cheaper ha. We found this ice cream place on the way home that gave you double decker ice cream cones stacked on top of each other. You could get up to 10 cones stacked so of course, we did! Delicious!! I think I've finally found some people who like ice cream almost as much as I do..and that's saying something! At night, we played games on the rooftop which was way fun! It was freezing though!! Its actually kinda cold in beijing as opposed to back in zhongshan where its 200ยบ all day and night long. It was a nice break from the heat.
Our last day in beijing :( Melissa and I wanted to trade our tickets to xian with a couple of the guys from kaiyin group who were staying in Beijing longer but it didn't work out. We tried to get it changed at the station that morning but they said we couldn't do it and the train people don't speak english very well so they were pretty much useless anyways. So that was a little bit of a bummer that we didn't get to stay longer in beijing but im sure xian will be fun too :) We spent our last day at the olympic stadium. We explored the birds nest and saw the Olympic rings and wall of olympians names. Then we had our last supper before the train ride. We ate at a cheap dumpling place down the road from our hostel that we found the other day. Its delicious food and super cheap. Needless to say, we spent a lot of time there in the past few days haha. Pretty successful day :) Im sitting on the train to xian right now..did I mention I hate trains? Three more hours and then I can get off this gross, smelly thing. Thank goodness.
Xian: On saturday we went to the terracotta warriors. It wasn't the coolest thing i've been to here but still impressive. Seeing right in front of your eyes the things you've learned about in history classes all those years(okay the things we were supposed to learn about) was pretty interesting. After exploring the terracotta army, we went to this food street with tons of little street vendors and tried fried bananas, pineapple porridge stuff, rice ice cream, meat on a stick, and some fry bread tostada type thing with some weird stuff inside. They were all yummy, the meat was a little funky but not bad. I think it was lamb, but you never really know here :P We woke up at 7am sunday morning and took a 28 hour train ride back home. Longest trip of my life. The journey back was 36 hours total. We didnt get home to our apartment until 7pm monday night because we had to catch a few other metros and buses back to kaiyin from the main train station. Thank goodness for movies and nice chinese men who switched us seats.
Since coming to China, i've realized there are a lot of simple things that I took for granted back in the states, so I've started a little list of things that I'm thankful for:
Toilet paper. And regular toilets too for that matter. I honestly don't mind squatters that much except for the fact that they are so nasty and dirty. If they were clean I wouldn't even mind using them but alas, it seems hardly anything here in china is clean.
Traffic enforcement. I know, I know.I never thought I'd say I'm grateful for traffic laws either. But after driving through china streets, I'm glad we have enforcement.
Wards. I miss having a ward family. It's weird having to skype in for church every week and then there only being about 30 of us total. I guess I was just spoiled back at home with such a huge ward.
Cold drinking water. Whenever we go out to eat, we're served boiling hot water to drink(even at some of the hostels we stay at). In beijing, we would fill our water bottles up before bed and one night it melted Melissa's bottle because it was so hot!
Soap. You would think that soap would be a given next to a sink in the bathroom. Apparently it's not.
Milk. I just miss normal, cold, cows milk. There's no such thing here. Or If there is, I haven't found it yet.
Lines. I can't tell you how appreciative I am of a simple, orderly line of people. Nobody waits in lines here. There are just mobs of people and if you want to get to the front, you have to push your way through and be aggressive or you'll never make it.
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