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Published: April 25th 2013
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I have so much to say catch everyone up! So back on the 20th, my class and got to go rafting on bamboo rafts down the nine twists river! It was an overcast day, and although we had rain ponchos, luckily it did not pour on us! It was beautiful and relaxing. It was about an hour and a half ride with scenery of gorges and lush vegetation. There were cavities in some of the cliffs with coffins that date back to 4000 years ago! Scientist still dont know how the coffins were placed in these caves. I had my theory that they were lowered and swung into from the top, which still seemed somewhat impossible. I guess the truth will always remain a mystery. After the raft ride we walked along side the river and up a mountain a bit to a Taoist temple, which was lead by a lady monk (it is rare that woman run temples). They cooked us an amazing (all vegetarian) lunch of mushrooms, bamboo and plants from the river. After lunch she invited us to have tea to talk about Taoism and to ask questions. Our tour guide cindy translated for us. We spent the
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I think we had too much weight haha rest of the afternoon walking around the temple admiring the woodwork and statues carved out of jade. I spent a good hour chasing the chickens, taking way too many photos of them running around and climbing the mountain side. While i was bugging them, i caught a cock fight on camera! I had never seen one before, there were over 5 roosters so i wasnt surprised it happened. It was pretty badass and once i get back to the states i can upload the video for all of you to see. I probably shouldn't be chasing chickens considering the bird flu is breaking out, but i couldn't help it, they were so adorable! Anyways, the afternoon was lovely, we went to a tea market before we went back to campus, and i tried different grades of wuyi's famous dahongpao oolong tea. It was super yummy and warmed up my soul after a long wet day. The next day the class went to hike heavenly peak. I stayed home so i could catch up on emails and school work. I was feeling stressed out because we have been do busy i wasnt getting any opportunity to check in with my group.
Cavities
Can you see the holes with the coffins? I also arranged a meeting with 5 business students to talk about the website my group and i have been building. Although i didnt go to the mountain (they saw monkeys that day!) i still got a lot accomplished and was grateful i had that time to work on school stuff. The next day we had class on chinese philosophy, calligraphy, and bamboo drawing. It was hard but really fun. The teacher (la loashi) said "hen hao!!" When he saw my characters! He didnt say that to anyone else really so i felt good 😊. That night there was a party just for us. Some students sang and others did tai ji and kung foo. I did a hula hoop performance in front of everyone to a random chinese song, it was sweet! I also gave a mini speech about our website project back home and what we are trying to accomplish here in china. Only half the kids spoke broken english so even if my speech sucked i dont think they would have noticed the difference. I also did my first "gandom style" dance haha if that is even how you spell it. I had also brought face paint,
Princess peak
There is a myth or story behind everything in china and they were stoked! Most of them had never had their face painted. We also met four lady english teachers from florida, Ireland, and england. They took us out for hotpot and chow mien, and we exchanged stories about our travels and future endeavors. They were excited to have other english speaking girls to talk to and were extremely nice, i was glad to have met them. Overall i really enjoyed wuyi, besides the rain, the students were so helpful and sharing, they gave us all presents when we left, my favorite was yaya. Her english name was Ajeanda and she loved hiphop and slang words. We left wuyi to hangzhou on
a 10:30 pm train on the night of the 22nd.. The train is always interesting. They had only gotten 8 soft sleepers and 4 hard sleepers.. And the teacher asked for volunteers for the hard sleepers. Of coarse no one wanted to, so i was the first to volunteer (i deserve an ice cream or something!) i had volunteered last train ride as well so it made me upset that no one else would step up to the plate. The tickets were also pre determined with our names on them
Bonsai!
I took this picture for my pops! and my original ticket was a soft sleeper.. But it was only a 8 hour ride overnight so it wasnt really that bad. I still didnt sleep at all anyways. And i heard that one of the students had drank a whole bottle of bi jou (extremely strong clear chinese liquor) to himself and kept everyone else awake puking.. Sometimes shitty things work out in the end 😊
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