Yangshuo pictures

This is the view from the top of the mountain we climbed in Yangshuo.

Spring Break Part 4: Yangshuo 阳朔

When we arrived in Yangshuo, we went to our hostel to check in, and were pleasantly surprised that it was the same price as our hostel in Guilin, only 20 RMB (approximately $3 USD) a night per person. And it was a nice hostel too! After we checked in, we went to go shopping in the center of town, which is always a fun bargaining experience. We discovered that Yangshuo has the largest selection of Western food (out of anywhere I have been at least) in China so far. Pizza, ice cream, hamburgers and other western food options lined the streets, as well as your fair selection of Beer Fish, Rice noodles and other specialties to the region. That night after shopping, we had pizza and draft beer, which despite how much I love Chinese food, was one of the best meals ever. The perfect combination! That night we watched Harry Potter in Chinese at our hostel.

The next day we got up early and had breakfast at a Western restaurant called Kelly's. I just got baozi because 1.) they're the best thing ever and 2.) they're way cheaper. But my friends got a typical breakfast of eggs and bacon, and they were thrilled. "This was the reason I wanted to come back to Yangshuo," Vince said, as he had already been once before, "For their Western food." Then we rented bikes and Kevin led us into a rural area, where we biked to a small, but famous, bridge. I think it was called Dragon Something Bridge but I'm not sure. The scenery was beautiful, "so beautiful it's like a painting," as one Chinese proverb goes. We stopped for lunch in a small little town that had a sign out front that said, "This town is the perfect model of a socialist community." That was one of our worst meals of the trip, mostly just because it was so expensive and the waitresses smelled bad.

We continued on to a famous mountain next to the town. We climbed to the top of the mountain on a trail surrounded by bamboo, greeted every few minutes by old women carrying coolers on their back full of drinks like water and soda. When we got the the top, there were more old ladies that could barely speak Mandarin selling postcards. After taking a rest to enjoy the scenery, we continued down a path that was marked "Forbidden path for tourists." After crouching down almost the whole way up (the path was overgrown by bamboo) we were rewarded by an absolutely phenomenal view of Yangshuo. I've included the pictures in this post. Probably the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life.

After hiking back down the mountain, we biked home. That night, we had hamburgers and french fries at Kelly's. I got their famous veggie burger and it was amazing! I know, I know what you're thinking. How can a veggie burger taste good? But this was a hand-made patty of deliciousness. That night we hung out on the rooftop of a bar, and were awed by the scenery once again. Artificial lights lit up the views of the mountains surrounding us, and at 10:00 pm on the dot, all the scenic lights went out, plunging the scenery into darkness. After a little while we went home and fell asleep, exhausted from the days activities.

The next day was Saturday, May 8th, and we got another Western breakfast and shopped a little more. We also bought fruit and snacks for the 27-hour train ride back to Nanjing that awaited us later that evening. That afternoon, we got a bus back to Guilin, went to Kevin's apartment to get our stuff, ate some rice noodles, and went to the train station. At 7:00 pm we boarded our train and discovered that our train-mates were two younger guys from Anhui province and a group of women heading to Shanghai for a meeting. The women started playing cards, and inspired, we started our own game of hearts. It was definitely a party train. Very "热闹 renao" as they say in Chinese, which at it's best translation, means "lively." One of the young guys from Anhui was extremely curious about us, and asked us a million questions. The cabin was hot, for some reason it didn't have air conditioning either. At 10:00 pm, the lights went out, and I climbed up to my top bunk and slept soundly. Apparently, the guy from Anhui kept asking Vince (who was on the bottom bunk) questions until Vince was like, "Alright, dude, I'm going to sleep."

The next day, we woke up around 9:00 am and did homework for most of the day. The guy from Anhui kept relentlessly asking us questions. It was pretty funny after a while, but to be fair, he did help us with our homework. We snacked on our fruit and cookies the whole day and played cards. I took a nap around 3:00 pm for a couple hours. Then at 10:00 pm on Sunday, May 9th our train arrived in Nanjing. We took the subway back to campus and said goodbye as we went our separate ways. Another semester, another Spring Break. This one was unforgettable.

Spring Break Part 3: Guilin 桂林

The first picture is a picture that I took of the Li River, and the second picture is all 6 of us on the bamboo raft on the Li River.

 

Jess, DD and I arrived in Guilin at 8 am on Wednesday, May 5^th in a parking lot/shopping square full of convenience stores, restaurants, and hotels. After asking for directions, we finally found our hostel down an alleyway lined with restaurants. We checked in and happily found out that we were given a room with 2 bunk beds, but we had the room to ourselves. Yay! I called Kevin (my classmate from last semester who now goes to Guilin Normal University) and we arranged to meet up at the train station at 10:30 am. Jess, DD and I took much-needed showers (we hadn't showered since before hiking the day before) and then I ate my first bowl of mifen. Actually, at the time I didn't know that I was eating this super specialty dish that I saw on signs in every single restaurant. I thought I was just eating noodles. Mifen means "rice noodle" and there were a ton of restaurants in Guilin that served this dish for around 4 RMB. It's a bowl of noodles with a few pieces of meat on the top, and then on the side you can add your own "condiments", like spices, onions, peppers and other flavors. It was quite good actually.

 

So I met Kevin at the train station, and then we went back to the hostel to get Jess and DD. When we were riding the bus to a park in Guilin, Kevin goes: "Every once in a while someone will sit in the fake ticket booth they have at the entrance and try to make you pay an entrance fee. But don't worry, you don't actually have to pay, they just try to make tourists pay sometimes." So when we got to the park, we started walking through the gate entrance and a woman came running out of the ticket booth and stopped us. "Tickets! Tickets!" she yelled. Luckily, Kevin saved the day by being like, "Um, I go to this park all the time and I've never had to pay. We all go to Guilin Normal University." Without putting up too much of a fight, the woman let us go in for free.

 

Jess and DD were exhausted from hiking in Zhangjiajie and in Dehang, so Kevin and I decided to hike up a small mountain they had in the park, while Jess and DD decided to walk around the lake. As we climbed the mountain, I caught Kevin up on the latest CIEE gossip, namely that Pingping is pregnant, Tangle is coming back to work for CIEE after "failing" the Beijing University Ph.D. interview process because the son of a CEO of a major international company in Hong Kong cut in, and how all of our friends from last semester were doing. Kevin himself was taking classes at the university, as well as teaching English to over 200 kids at a middle school and high school in Guilin.

 

He had just been fired the day before though! Turns out that the Guilin police are really prejudice against all black people, since some Africans have been coming into China and dealing drugs. The Guilin police had recently done a drug bust that had involved some Africans, and as a result, they were investigating every black person that lived in Guilin. Kevin's friend and co-worker at the middle school was an African-American and the police had been investigating him for the past couple weeks, including following him around. One Friday, they even followed him to a bar, and after he had drank a little bit, the police came in and asked him what he was doing in China. He said, "I'm here teaching English," which was a big mistake because he only had a student visa. So the police started investigating the school where he and Kevin worked at. The school told Kevin that they had to fire him and his friend, since now the school was under investigation as well, and both of them only had student visas. Apparently, the school told Kevin that he was fired and that his African-American friend was a drunk and a thief and Kevin shouldn't be friends with him anymore.

 

 Kevin was in the CIEE A class last semester, which is the class that I'm taking this semester. So I have the teachers now that he had last semester, so we talked about their silly mannerisms and the way that they conducted class. It was weird though, because it sounded like the teachers definitely changed some of the teaching styles since last semester. When we got to the top of the mountain, the view was beautiful. It was a little foggy so we couldn't see to far. "This view is really underwhelming," Kevin said.

 

We hiked back down and called DD to find out where they were. "We are by all the singing," she said. "Just keep walking by the lake and you'll see us." As we walked, we heard some singing and saw Jess and DD sitting at a picnic table with about 6 old Chinese people. Kevin and I walked over and the old people offered for us to sit down and eat some of their food. Kevin and I both can't sing, so we just sat and listened while Jess and DD sang "There ain't no mountain high enough." After that, the old people sang a Chinese song for us and then we left. After that, Kevin showed us his gym that he calls the "Porno Gym" that had pictures of huge muscular and sometimes even naked people on the walls. "I wish you guys could see the men's locker room," Kevin said. "It has even more pornographic pictures on the walls."

 

We walked to Kevin's university campus and ate some tianbao, which are steamed buns with a really sweet fruit flavored sauce inside. After that we got lunch at a stir-fry place where you just pick out a ton of vegetables and they make a stir-fry for you for less than 10 RMB. Pretty awesome! We got some milk-tea after that and then headed to an area outside the city go on a walk/hike. After walking for less than 10 minutes from his campus in the city, we found ourselves in an extremely rural area that looked like it came right on the 1940s. Dirt roads, abandoned shacks with phone numbers and "For Rent" spray painted on the side, political graffiti, rice paddies and other crop fields, livestock and houses that looked like they were about to fall apart. In the background, the beautiful views of Guilin's famous scenery were visible. It was nice to escape the pollution, noise and dirt of the city center in Guilin. We walked down a dirt road for an hour or two, chatting mostly about our study abroad experiences and comparing this semester to last semester (we do that a lot these days). Jess and DD told Kevin about this semester's experiences, and Kevin and I told them about all the crazy shenanigans about last semester. We talked about first impressions, and they can be so wrong sometimes, and how they change so dramatically over the course of a semester.

 

After a while, we realized that we had to turn around, so we headed back towards Kevin's campus. We got a cab back to our hostel and Kevin went home to rest and do some errands. When we got back to the hostel, we got a call from Vince and Lahela, who were coming in to Guilin by train that day from Chengdu (a 26-hour train ride). So we went to go pick the two of them up and we all bought our train tickets back to Nanjing. After Vince and Lahela showered, we went to Kevin's apartment and then got Korean food. We then went and walked along the lake in Guilin, which was a pretty beautiful sight. Vince caught Kevin up on all his news from this semester. We went back to the hostel, shared a bottle of wine, played pool and passed out in our beds. The next morning, Kevin came to our hostel around 9:00 am and we checked out of the hostel. We would spend the day heading to Yangshuo on various forms of transportation, including taking a bamboo raft down the famous Li River.

 

So we went outside and got a bus to the Li River, where Kevin bargained with a man who said he would take us on the river for only 200 RMB.  Although it was raining, he just kept saying over and over how the weather was perfect for riding a boat on the river. After catching another bus, we made it to the Li River and the six of us got on a bamboo raft. We felt lucky about this because Kevin said usually the rafts only fit 4 people. The man was right: it wasn't too hot and the view was fantastic that day, and it wasn't raining very hard anymore, instead a mist of fog covered the mountain peaks, making the view incredible. We floated down the river for a few hours, just sitting, enjoying the peacefulness and relaxation and taking pictures.

 

When we arrived at our destination, we took a golf-cart type vehicle to another small town along the Li River. "You have to be really brave to sit on the outside," Kevin said. Kevin was our tour guide slash leader for the day since he had already done the trip. "I'm brave!" I said, and sat on the outside. Along the way, I nearly fell out of the car about 3 times, it was incredibly bumpy and rocky, but fun. When we arrived, we had lunch and had some Beer Duck, a specialty in the region, as well as some other food. The highlight of the meal were the carmalized apples we got at the end. Not hard, sticky carmeal, but carmel that was still warm and soft. We had to eat the apples as soon as we could before they became hard like cement. We walked around the town for a little while and shopped, I bought a dress and some postcards and my friend bought a cute bag that looked like an owl.

 

Then we caught a bus to Yangshuo, where there was an Australian family with 3 blonde kids who kept us entertained by telling us jokes and saying things like, "My dad has 10,000 nose hairs but I don't have any!" To be continued in Yangshuo…

 

Pictures to go along with this blog post below!

 

 

Pictures of the traveling group

Pictures from Guilin

These are pictures of the rural area we went to

Pictures from the Li River

漓江

Spring Break Part 2: Dehang 德夯

My plane arrived in Zhangjiajie on Monday, May 3^rd around 11 pm. On the plane, I had decided I would go to the train station by cab right away and get a train as soon as possible to Jishou, which is the closest city to Dehang. So when I asked the cab driver to take me to the train station, he told me the train station was closed and that I would have to wait until morning to buy tickets and go to Jishou. He then offered to take me to Jishou for 300 yuan. I told him no, and just asked him to take me to a hostel I had looked up in case a situation like this happened. Then, out of nowhere, around five or six taxi drivers surrounded us, offering to take me to the hostel for a cheaper price. Looking back on it, I realize that they were probably just trying to cheat me the entire time, and that I probably could have just gone to the train station straightaway. I'm not sure though.

Anyway, after an annoying game of musical chairs, where I moved from cab to cab, I finally settled in a cab that told me he could take me to Jishou for 150 yuan. Then at the last second he said, "Oh, actually it's going to be 180 yuan." At this point, I was so fed up, and so angry, and so tired, and so annoyed by this process, I was just like "Fine. Go." Then, he took me to a place around 10 minutes away and I got in another cab that would take me to Jishou. As soon as I got in the cab, the cab driver's wife, who was in the passenger seat, immediately starts telling me how this trip usually costs 300 yuan and how I should be paying 300 yuan. So at this point I'm just like "What the F are you talking about??" So she's all "Oh, you know, we're giving you a special discount, you're so lucky." So I calm down, but I'm still a little nervous, after all at this point it is 1:00 am and they could be kidnapping me for all I know.

Finally, I arrive in Jishou safe and sound, and I've been texting my friends in Dehang the whole time. They are unnecessarily really worried about me, and tell me that I won't be able to get into Dehang (Dehang is a National Park and they thought the gates were closed) that night. So I tell them that they shouldn't worry and that I'll find somewhere to stay in Jishou. However, when I get to Jishou at 2:30 am, I ask around and find out that a bus leaves for Dehang at 5:00 am. So no way am I going to pay for a hostel for only 2 hours. So I find a little 24-hour rice noodle joint set up on the side of the road and get some noodles and pork and vegetables. It was delicious in case you are wondering.

So I sat there and chilled with the owner of the noodle stand, a truck driver, some extremely well-dressed young men who were potentially traveling or coming home from a bar, and some cab drivers for about 2 hours. Then randomly at 4:00 am the noodle stand lady was like "Oh, by the way, the first bus to leave for Dehang is at 7:00 am." So at this point I'm like, "No way am I waiting another 3 hours for the bus." Plus it had started to rain at this point. And so she called her nephew and was like "Get out of bed, lazy bum, and come take this chick to Dehang." So he ended up driving me to Dehang at 4:00 am and it turned out that the park gates are actually open 24 hours a day, so I could have just gone there straightaway via taxi, without having to wait around with noodle lady.

Regardless, I arrived in Dehang at 5:00 am and called my friend to let her know that I arrived. She was groggily answered the phone and was like, "Yeah… I don't really know where you are or how to give you directions to our hostel… and it's raining… and dark… and the middle of the night… I have no idea what to do." So I say, "Alright, I'll figure it out." So I saw this guy in a van and I asked him for directions. Luckily, he was a nice guy who also happened to know the owner of the hostel, so he took me there and called the owner to come and open the door for me. I told him I was here to meet two other foreigners, and they took me to their room. When I walked in, my friend DD goes "Oh, thank God you're here. We definitely thought we were going to find you the next morning, dead on the side of the road, without any of your organs." We all just collapsed in laughter out of exhaustion and relief. I took a shower right away, as summer has arrived in China and it is HOT, therefore sticky, and passed out in my friends' bed with her.

After sleeping for about 1 hour, my friend Sean woke me up and we had breakfast together with his sister. They left a couple hours later for Chengdu in the Southwest, and I would continue South that night with my other two friends, DD and Jess. After Sean left, DD and Jess woke up and we went hiking together. We walked to the tallest waterfall in China and discovered that in the span of less than 24 hours, the waterfall had completely dried up. "This is impossible! We were here yesterday and saw the waterfall!!" DD and Jess said. But sure enough, supposedly the most awesome waterfall in China had miraculously dried up. After talking with some other the other girls in the area, it turned out that the waterfall could be turned on and off, just like you turn on and off a light. "We just called them! They said they'd turn on the waterfall in 10 minutes!!" The girls told us. So we waited and sure enough, 10 minutes later, a small trickle of water appeared and slowly but surely, the tallest waterfall in China was turned on. Although this ruined some of the charm of this beautiful and natural place, we still figured that it was part of a very necessary damming system.

After that we went hiking through a bamboo forest, but the rocks were really slippery, so we climbed back down and started down the hiking path on the other side of town. The hike wound through scenic rice paddies, and later after a long climb up steep steps, we made it to another beautiful waterfall. After that, we decided to keep going up several flights of stairs, to the peak of one of the mountains off the side of the trail. It was a hard climb to the top! When we got to the top, the sight was absolutely breathtaking. It was also completely silent up there at the top, except for a few birds chirping in the distance. It was incredible humid and we were at an extremely high elevation, and it started to sprinkle a little bit. It felt great, as the three of us were sweating profusely. After sitting at the top enjoying the view for a while, we hiked back down.

On the hike back through the rice paddies, my friend Jess walked ahead a little bit and in the distance I saw her turn around and start laughing. When I caught up to her and DD, I asked them what happened. "Two men are skinny dipping in the pond up ahead!" they said. "Are they foreigners or Chinese?" I asked. "They're white!" they answered. So we kept walking and as I turned the bend, sure enough there were two men, in broad daylight at 2:30 in the afternoon, stark naked. Upon seeing us, they didn't even blink an eye, or even jump in the water, or grab for their clothes. They just waved and said hello, asking where we were from. They had European accents so Yay! They were not silly Americans. Score another point for us. When we said we were from the States, they screamed, "I love Obama!!" We just giggled and ran away.

As we were arriving back to Dehang, we saw two young girls of the Miao minority dressed in their traditional clothes, squatting over a dammed area of the stream, washing clothes. When I looked over, I saw that one of the girls had whipped out an extremely fashionable and hip cell phone and was texting.

We went back to the hostel and got our things together, as well as washed our faces and brushed our teeth in preparation for the 10-hour overnight train ride that awaited us. We carried our luggage to the village square and decided to also buy snacks for the train and get dinner. So we sat down and got ready to have a nice relaxing dinner before going to Jishou, as we had given ourselves about 2 hours in leeway time to have dinner and go to the Internet Café in town. So we ordered our food… and waited…and waited… and waited. We decided to embrace the countryside lifestyle of relaxation and not fret about the fact that it was taking so long to get our food, as it was an open kitchen and we could see that they were cooking in there. So finally 1 hour later, our food arrived. Keep in mind that this is literally the longest I have ever had to wait for food in China. It normally takes about 5 minutes to be served food at any restaurant.

So we're kind of annoyed but it's not that big of a deal. Then, a couple bites into our dishes, the bus ticket woman comes up to us and asks us if we're going to Jishou, as she can see we have luggage and probably need to get to the train station. So we say "yes" and she goes "Hurry up and eat! The last bus to Jishou leaves RIGHT NOW!" So we're were like, "Wait, we thought the last bus left at 7:00 pm!" (at this point it was 6:00 pm) and she was like "No, this is the last bus of the evening!" So we shovel the food down our throats and run after the bus. Out of breath, we pile into the bus and curse our Lonely Planets for giving us wrong information yet again. As our bus traveled down the bumpy road on the way to Jishou for the next hour, we saw two more Jishou-Dehang busses traveling in the opposite direction, two busses that we could have caught if we had just been given a chance to enjoy our dinner. We think maybe the woman was working on commission and gets more money the more people get on her bus. I don't think this is the case, I think she must have just been mistaken, but we were pretty pissed off anyway.

When we get to Jishou, we are an hour early for our train, and we find out our train is 45 minutes delayed. So after spending a half an hour at an Internet Café, we waited in the hot and sweaty waiting room at the train station, and played with some random baby that was running around. Finally our train arrived. So we gathered our luggage and joined the huge throng of Chinese people pushing, shoving and running for the train for no apparent reason, as the train was not going anywhere until everyone boarded, but this is China, what can you say?

When we got on the train, we discovered that we were literally the only women in our car. As we were putting our luggage away, we looked up and a crowd of middle-aged men were surrounding us. "Where do you think they're from?" one of them asked. "I don't know, I think maybe Russia." "No, I think they're from Holland," one of them said. "We're Americans," I replied and then they just stared, wide-eyed at all of us. My friend Sean has a theory that Chinese people like to guess where white people are from, and when they guess right, they pride themselves in being able to distinguish which country white people are from. Chinese people particularly like to do this with Canadians and Americans, and frequently ask Sean if he is Canadian. Most of the time, like with Sean, they are wrong. They actually even have a hard time distinguishing Chinese from Koreans, and sometimes even Japanese. They usually rely on mannerisms and style of hair or clothing to guess.

Anyway, the car was stifling hot--either the air conditioning was broken or the train didn't have any—so we climbed up to our top bunks (always the cheapest, so always our choice), which was even hotter than down below (damn hot air rising and all) and tried to sleep. We would arrive at our destination at around 5 am, so we set our alarms, but still woke up continuously throughout the night, afraid that we would miss our stop. We finally arrived in Liuzhou, a town 1 hour south of Guilin, at 5 am on Wednesday, May 5^th. After bargaining with a man who said he was giving us a discount because we were foreigners (yeah, right BS!), we got a bus to Guilin. To be continued in Guilin…

Spring Break Part I: Shanghai 上海

The first picture is (from left to right) Pingping, Pingping's cousin, Eric and me. The second picture is of me riding a horse in Jinshan by the beach.
 
On the morning of Friday, April 30^th I embarked on a 10-day journey across Southern China for my Spring Break. That Friday morning I was running late as per usual, and after finally catching a cab near my apartment, we ran into a major traffic jam. Not only was it rush hour, but it was also the Friday before the National Labor Day, and the roads were packed. Luckily I had given myself one hour of leeway time. However, my cab driver attempted to take me to the subway instead, saying that it would be faster, but after realizing that it would actually take longer for me to get the subway, turned around and took me to the train station, thus resulting in an even longer cab ride. I don't think he was trying to scam me, as he was legitimately calling his cab-driver buddies and asking what the shortest routes were. Anyway, I ended up getting to the train station just in time (I arrived 15 minutes before the train left) to catch my train to Shanghai.

 

When I arrived in Shanghai, I took the subway to Eric's house in the suburbs. He picked me up at the subway station and we went to his house to have lunch with his parents. After that we relaxed, read a little and watched TV, and I helped Eric apply for a summer school program at Boston University. After dinner with his family, Eric and I headed to The Bund just to walk around and enjoy the city and take some pictures. The Bund is the former French Concession area in Shanghai, and it's across the river from the business district where all the skyscrapers are. Needless to say, this is an absolutely beautiful sight to see, especially at night and if you are interested in architecture.

 

It turned out that that Friday night was the Eve of the opening of the World Expo, something that China has been going crazy about since last year. In case you haven't heard, it's basically this huge event where almost 200 countries have set up little tents like museums and you can go visit every country. "Go see the expo and know the world" is one of this year's mottos. Anyway, basically it was more crowded than it was at Obama's Inauguration, which is saying a lot. A big opening ceremony for the Expo would take place that night. We finally found a place on The Bund to watch the fireworks, but by the time 9:30 rolled around, we realized the fireworks weren't going to start until 10:00. Fearing that if we stayed for the fireworks, we wouldn't be able to make it back to the subway by 11:00 when it closed (and fearing the crowds that would take over the subway at that time) we left early and ended up missing the fireworks. It was still really fun and incredibly beautiful to see the city lit up on the other side of the river.

 

Anyway, the next morning we got up at 6:00 am, had a delicious breakfast of homemade dumplings, and headed over to Jinshan to see Pingping, her husband Roger and her family. That afternoon we went to Pingping's cousin's wedding, which was awesome, beautiful and interesting, as is everything I encounter in China. The wedding first consisted of a huge banquet lunch, with more food than anyone could eat and plates piled high on the huge lazy Susan. The bride and groom participated in a quite a few Western traditions, including wearing a white dress and exchanging rings in the midst of a shower of bubbles. They also engage in a special ceremony where the bride and groom can officially call their mothers and fathers-in-law "Mom" and "Dad." The bride changed her dress 3 times in one afternoon, and they set off fireworks while the bride and groom engaged in what I felt was a rather inappropriately passionate kiss. Afterward the bride called all the non-married people up on stage and so, of course, Eric and Pingping made me go up there against my will. And of course I had to be the one that caught the bouquet. Super embarrassing since everyone was like "umm who is this foreigner and what is she doing at our wedding?"

 

Anyway, it was pretty funny because a bunch of people thought that I was Eric's girlfriend, so they kept calling me his wife and his dad my father-in-law just to tease him. A little awkward for me, but more embarrassing for him, I think. After lunch, another one of Pingping's cousins took us to the beach. Luckily for me, I can drive a stick shift (thanks mom and dad for teaching me that wonderful skill) so I was able to help drive one of the cars since people were either too drunk, didn't have a driver's license (well I don't have a Chinese driver's license either, come to think of it), or wanted to drive in this fancy sports car that the family had borrowed for the day (aka Roger). So Roger and Pingping's cousin were driving this awesome black BMW convertible in front of us, and even as a foreigner myself, I have never seen anyone get so many stares. We joked that if I had been driving the car, the Chinese people probably would have shit themselves: an amazing black BMW convertible, and a FEMALE FOREIGNER is driving it with a Chinese male in the passenger seat????? It would have been more shocking that the Japanese occupation. But alas, I was behind them driving a normal car so they didn't notice. Anyway, we went to the beach and thanks to Pingping's cousin's crazy connections throughout this small little town, we got to ride on this awesome speed boat for free. And got to cut in front of everyone else in line. It really pays to have connections in China.

 

After that we went to some horse stables on a different part of the beach and rode horses. This was probably one of the highlights of my entire trip. Basically, the horse stable manager rode next to me the whole time, guiding my horse and making him cantor and run. It was awesome, one of the biggest thrills of my life, though tiring and it hurt a little. After that we went back to the wedding and ate dinner, again consuming enormous amounts of food while the plates piled higher and higher on the lazy Susan. That night Roger's friend Xiaojin from elementary school came and joined us in the festivities. I ended up being the designated driver that night and I was glad to help out, again thankful that I could drive a stick shift. However, due to several drunken mis-communications between me and other people, they ended up getting a taxi home later that night, leaving Eric and me waiting for them longer than we needed to at the bar. Anyway, that night I slept in Pingping's house. The next morning was Sunday and I showered at Pingping's and had a delicious breakfast of noodles. Later, Pingping, Roger and I went to the beach and took an early afternoon stroll by the water. Roger went exploring in the water for a while, while Pingping and I sat and chatted, watching Roger and his silly shenanigans and laughing. Pingping told me when she was little she would come to the beach all the time to catch crabs, but now they've left due to the flood of human population in the area.

 

Later we had lunch at her cousin's house and we relaxed and drank tea and I chatted with Xiaojin. Afterward, we went to a different horse farm and rode horses again, but this time it wasn't as much fun because the horses were moving really slowly and not willing to run. Plus, it was really hot that day. After that, Eric and I rode the bus back to his house. That night we nearly died laughing looking at all the pictures from that weekend and some hilarious pictures Eric found online. One of the pictures was of a family of 6 riding on a motorcycle, another was of an enormously fat women sitting on a man's lap with the caption underneath saying "I had to cut off my legs because my girlfriend sat on them too much." Don't know if that makes sense in this context, but I'm telling you, the Chinese really do have a great sense of humor. And that night I dreamed in Chinese.

 

The next day was Monday, May 3^rd and Eric's dad took us shopping at the Outlets, but I didn't buy anything because even though the clothes were on sale, the prices were virtually the same as if I would buy them in the States. After a long day of shopping, we had lunch and then Eric took me to the airport to catch my flight to Zhangjiajie. I was sitting by my gate in the airport engrossed in the Lonely Planet when I looked up and realized that my flight boarded 15 minutes earlier and they were on the Last Call. I ran up to the flight attendant and then I realized that I couldn't find my boarding pass. After basically dumping the contents of my bag on the floor of the airport, I finally found it and gave it to an astonished and surprised flight attendant. I gathered my stuff and boarded the plane like a hot mess and began the next leg of my journey to the deep south of China… To be continued…