Guilin & Yangshou

So it has been a LONG time!  I have felt like a chicken with my head cut off this month, and haven't had much time to write, and if I did; I was sleeping.  Much needed sleep I might add.

So we had a vacation of 4 days that we decided to go to Guilin/Yangshou on.  These are small towns that are about an hour apart from each other, but both have amazing things that you can only find in China. 

We traveled there on a bus, but not just any bus, on a sleeper bus.  It was one of the oddest, yet greatest inventions I have ever encountered.  It was two stories, and very crowded, but I enjoyed my 12 hours on that thing.  

Sleeper Bus!!

 We arrived early morning in Guilin, and just chilled at our hostel until check in time.  It was a pretty sweet place!

It was the perfect place for my early morning scripture study.

Later that day we got to walk on water…I’m not lying!  We were walking across this bridge and saw people walking on water.  Well we wanted to too, so we headed down the bridge to find ourselves elated at our finding.  It was a great experience to have.

This girl helped me across the water because it was super slippery, and let's face it she saw I was strugglin'.  Thanks beautiful girl!

The next day, we got to see the mountains that are supposedly seen in the movie Avatar.  I was in heaven for a couple hours while I got to raft down the river to see these mountains.  They were absolutely breathtaking! 

We bought flower crowns for a dollar.  Score.

Love this girl!

After our raft ride, we ate some yummy lunch and headed for the mud caves.  The cave was alright.  I say alright because the lady leading the tour in the cave said, “Look, this is the ice cream cone rock.  Use your imagination, and you will see.”  Haha I was like alright if that is the case, then I think it looks like an apple on an upside down mountain…..The mud bath was cool though!  It was really cold, and I couldn’t think of the germs and nasties in it because it smelled bad, and felt kinda slimy.  There were also naked children in it…eeeek.

After that experience, I got to sit on a water buffalo.  It was fun, but the man who owned the buffalo was the humblest of men.  

The day before we left we traveled up to Yao Mountain.   We took a cable car up to the top, and it was some view!  However, because of the smog and pollution, pictures weren’t the greatest.  

At the top of the mountain there was a place for prayer flags.  You buy a flag and put your prayer on it, and it was supposed to bring good luck.  There was SO many of them. 

After we soaked up enough of Yao Mountain, we tobogganed down for a fun 3 minute journey.  

Our vacation was supposed to be 4 days long, but if you remember, there was a super typhoon Usagi that was scheduled to hit the area where we lived the day we left.  Our coordinators in Utah sent out a mass message to all the head teachers advising us that it would be unsafe to travel home the day as scheduled.  We were kind of bummed, but excited we got to spend an extra day on vacation.  We didn’t do much because of the rain, but it was a restful day and got caught up on sleep.  The next morning, I received another email telling us that we couldn’t leave until the following day.  Now things got somewhat frustrating because we were broke at this point, and didn’t have any plans for the extra days that we were there.  We also found out we would have to teach on Saturday because of the days that were missed.  We longed to be home in Nanlang, but when we got on the bus to leave, I was sad that I had to say goodbye to such a beautiful place.  On our way out, I couldn’t sleep because of the memories these places left indented in my life.

 ONE Day in China. :)