51 pictures!

It has been 51 days since our last post. 51 days that have been jam-packed and eventful.

We'll give you a rough outline of what we've been up to, but you'll find most of the details in the captions of our pictures, one for every day you all have excitedly waited for this update, a whopping 51 in total!

We began April with another trip to Qing Cheng mountain. This time using the whole weekend, sleeping in a mountain-top guesthouse, and climbing to the Taoist temple atop the tallest peak. We made the trip with some of Cody's classmates, who all happen to be from Korea and really know how to handle their Baijiu (Chinese liquor) ... needless to say, our second mountain-top night was filled with merriment, homemade-Japanese-apricot moonshine and many a sing along. We were scrounging for songs and in our altered state somehow happened upon the 90's hit "2000 Miles" (I would walk 500 miles...) by the Pretenders. To our surprise, everyone LOVED IT! Especially since the call and response portion of the song, "ba da da, ba da da, ba da da, ba da da ...." (Don't pretend you don't know what we're talking about here) apparently sounds exactly like "wash your clothes!" in Korean.

Then it was back to work and school for a couple weeks before the arrival of our first guests! After navigating their way from the airport in HK to the Shenzhen border crossing and beyond, Stephanie's sister Laura and her friend Sarah arrived in Chengdu on April 11th and we all went on vacation. Their trip began with some Chengdu necessities which meant hot pot, Wuhou temple, and Sichuan Opera all on their first night! Early a.m. the next day we headed to Leshan Grand Buddha, and it seemed the travel gods were also on vacation, well, at least those assigned to Sarah.

After our second bus, (a city vehicle that wound through the charming streets of Leshan) we arrived at the entrance of Leshan Buddha park. Here we finagled student admission (1/2 price) with a combination of driver's licenses, gym membership cards and We Energies badges, and confronted our first stunning photo op. It was at this point, we realized that Sarah's digital camera was still riding through those charming Leshan streets, nestled on the seat of our last bus. The bus was long gone by this point and Sarah (an absolute trooper) reasoned that "the camera was older anyway, at least there weren't many pictures on it, I'll just get a new one in Chengdu." Like we said -- trooper.

Leshan Buddha left a little to be desired and we arrived back in Chengdu around 8pm hungry and ready to take it easy the rest of the night. The shady looking character on the last bus home -- with the slouched posture, insistance on staying near the front door, and jacket draped over his shoulders-- had different plans. We were pretty tired after hiking around Leshan which is why we chose to board the overly crowded un-lit 56 bus, (one of the few older 56's in the city) instead of waiting for the next one. It was definitely standing room only and the darkness was strange, but anything that would get us home faster was A-OK. We made it through the jerky ride to a stop near our apartment and started our walk home as Sarah realized the zipper on her bag was curiously open. She stopped in her tracks and frantically searched for the second missing item in one day. There was no denying it. Her wallet had been stolen.

Once again, she was astoundingly calm, collected, and positive, and by the time we left for Beijing the next week, she was armed with new credit cards and a new camera. Still, not the way you want to start a 3-week jaunt across the globe.

We made the most of every moment of Laura and Sarah's visit which included trips to Loudai (old China-style tourist-y town), KTV, the Chengdu Panda Reserve, Leshan Grand Buddha, Stephanie's classroom, a Chinese medicine facility, and Beijing with the highlight being our 3-day, 18hour climb to the top of one of the four famous Buddhist mountains in China, Emei Shan.

We set out for Emei Shan on Friday afternoon (April 18th) and got in three hours of climbing before sunset that first night. One great thing about Emei Shan is the abundance of gorgeous buddhist temples/guesthouses. The sun was down when we reached the Qingyin temple. The giant wooden doors were closed and we could hear gonging and chanting coming from inside. It didn't seem like the kind of place where you lug your pack up to the front desk and haggle for a room. We crept up the stairs and wondered ... Is it the buddhist equivalent of a mortal sin to knock on a temple door during a ceremony? We tried our luck, hoping Buddha would forgive us when we reached the summit, and were immediately offered rooms. Once inside we realized the "ceremony" was actually one lone monk banging on a bell and singing with the voice of 40.

The next day was the big climb, 11 straight hours, from 9am to 8pm. This was also the steepest part of the journey and included the "joking monkey zone". Ohhhh were those monkeys jokers. We stayed relatively monkey-attack-free, though we did ocassionally feel we were being tailed Congo stylee. The most coveted item was Stephanie's green bandana (probably because bandana sounds like banana .. tee hee) which was tied to her backpack and filled the mouth of a wiley little monkey after it shimmied up her side. The monkey was no match for our bamboo walking sticks (which we used to hit the ground, not the monkey) and all area monkeys took notice that we were a force to be reckoned with.

At sundown on Saturday we still remained 2 hours from the summit, a let-down because we had planned to sleep at the top of the mountain and catch the famed sunrise in the morning. At this point we were high enough to see the kinds of breathtaking views that belong outside an airplane window, but we wanted to see that sunrise. So at 5am that rainy Sunday morning, we awoke before the monks, slid into our cloud-soaked clothes and ponchos and started the rest of the assent, using flashlights to light each rain-slicked step. Cody and Sarah blazed ahead and the slow but steady Halfmann sisters followed behind. Soon we had climbed above the rain and the sky grew a few shades lighter. Cody and Sarah made it just in time to see the pinks and oranges of the sunrise, and Stephanie and Laura made it just before the mid-morning clouds rolled in (SEE PICTURES!). We couldn't believe our own legs had brought us the entire 3077m (over 10,000ft.) skyward.

We parted ways with our visitors in Beijing (after the Forbidden City, an acrobatics show, the Great Wall and two rounds of Peking duck) with both pairs boarding sleeper trains, us back to Chengdu, them to Guilin. We're still going through considerable visitor withdrawal :(

Now we're on the last leg of our Chengdu contracts/responsibilities and are figuring out where to go from here. The only commitments we have on the horizon are courtside seats to some Olympic diving in August. Then there's the whole visa thing ... Cody's ends in late August, Stephanie's in October. So who knows. Things may get a little tricky if we want to stay in China as the government has been having a field day with visa restrictions for foreigners and for a while there, we thought Cody might be kicked out of the country from June to August because of a new (though short lived) restriction for foreign student visa holders. All of this in an effort to put China's best face forward for the August games (best face does not include foreign protestors ...) So blogging is guaranteed to get juicy from here on out as we peruse the many options open to two aimless waterbugs on the pond of life with at least a little travel money left to spend, and many frontiers to explore ... time in the Philippines sounds nice ...

stay tuned, and thanks for reading.

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