Tomorrow is Halloween!

I'm wearing the awesome shirt that mom got me to class and handing out candy.

I still don't know what I'm going to be. I was going to be a penguin, but Jennifer poo-pooed all over that idea. I may still be a penguin anyways.

Nathan arrives around 8pm, then we are off into the night.

Trick or treat. Smell my feet. Give me something good to eat. <- I taught my classes that little diddy.

Laundry and sleep.

Oh the places you'll go...

Sometimes I have these weird little moments where I realize that I live in China.
I LIVE IN CHINA!
I work in China, I eat in China, I speak (bad) Chinese in China, I shop in China, I make friends in China, I'm in China.
It's just crazy, really.

I bought a a couple pairs of jeans today. They fit, but barely. Everything here is just a bit too small for me. I need to go shopping in Beijing, I think. I found clothes that fit there last time I was in this country. Perhaps when Mom visits we can make a trip up there, and see the Olympic village, also.

I received my package from Mom. I didn't open my birthday presents yet, though. I'm being good, though it's tempting.
I also got my gorgeous wall hanging from Nana. I can't wait to hang it up in my pink living room!
And......I got the cds, Grandpa. I will try to put them on my laptop tomorrow. Thank you!

I have cookies sitting on my desk which smell so good. They were tempting me while I was waiting for my lunch to cook, and I attempted to resist them... but then realized I'm a grown up and I'm allowed to eat a cookie before I eat my main meal. So I did. Delicious.

I'm very ready for Friday. I'm not sure why I feel anxiety this week when it comes to school, but I do. It's strange, because we're just watching a movie and doing a very short lesson on Halloween. Perhaps I'm anxious because we have midterms coming up. I've decided that I'm going to conduct job interviews with them. Next week we're learning about resumes and cover letters, then about job interviews, then having our midterms. Exciting stuff.

I've been watching Boston Legal while grading papers for the past two nights. It's such a great show, I really have a new appreciation for it. I bought seasons 1-4, so I've got awhile to go yet. It's too brilliant.

Also, I've decided to run away to Boracay, perhaps this summer.

Nanjing

Jennifer and I hopped on a bus around 5pm heading to Nanjing last Friday. The bus was one of those nice charter-style ones, and only had about 6 people other than us on it. We stopped for dinner in the evening at one of those rest stop/convenience shops. The driver came to talk to us, and we communicated in our garbled Chinglish.
The rest of the trip we napped and didn't do much. We arrived in Nanjing around midnight, then took a cab to Beijing Lu and Shanghai Lu where Chris met us. We headed to a bar and waited for Nikolai and Nathan to meet us there. The boys arrived a bit later, and we hung out at the bar for awhile with Chris, Jennifer, Ann, Leif, Brock, and James. It was good times.
Jennifer and I hadn't had any luck finding a hotel once we had gotten to Nanjing, so Jennifer decided to stay at Lief's apartment, and I went back to Nathan and Nik's hotel to stay with them.

The next day we got up around noon. We walked around Fuzimiao then spent the next few hours looking for a sandwich shop, which we never found.

We ended up at Salsa, a mexican food restaurant, which didn't have very good food. We did meet a really nice man there, a principal of a Canadian school in Nanjing, who told us some fun bars to visit. I had a bad headache, so we went back to the hotel to get some meds before we headed out.
Our first stop was in the Sheraton hotel, Danny's Pub. We met another Canadian there who was working as their foreign expert. Nice guy. We had a couple drinks there, and I got to try my first chocolate martini. Tasty.

We headed on to Blue Sky (I think that's the name) because there was supposed to be a big party there, and we were going to meet everyone there. It turned out to be a bit more subdued than we thought, but Chris and Lief were there, so we joined them in a couple games of fusball before heading to Castle Bar, where the rest of our group was. It was a good evening.


I woke up feeling a bit sick so I said bye to the boys, who had to head to the train station and went to Jennifers hotel room. We napped for a couple more hours, then got up to meet Chris at the Skyways sandwich place. We stopped at the international grocery store first where I picked up a microwave Taco Bell meal and some chocolate pudding cups (yum!).

Then we headed on to the sandwich place. It was sooo good to have a sandwich, despite feeling ill. After eating, Chris took us to the bus station and helped us buy our tickets.
The next bus wasn't for a couple hours so we hung out in the bus station. We had some pretty rude picture takers while we were there, and Jennifer very nearly decked a boy.
The bus ride home was uneventful. We watched a really good movie which we don't know the name of since it was in Chinese. Shame.
We arrived home around 10pm, exhausted from a good trip.



Today I spent my birthday money. Here's what I bought:

I'm home and alive.

I actually got back yesterday, pretty late.

I'm not much in the mood to sit down and write though, as I have hundreds (literally) of papers to grade.

Tomorrow I'm going shopping for my Halloween costume as I didn't find anything in Nanjing. Here's hoping I find something.

I'll throw down an update with pictures tomorrow.

XOXO

Huzzah Huzzah

Well, faithful readers, I'm keeping up with this traveling every weekend thing and heading to Nanjing this weekend with Jennifer.

Nathan and Nikolai are already on their way there, taking the overnight train. Jennifer and I leave tomorrow via bus.

How exciting!

Today Jennifer and I convinced David to take us to buy our tickets and then back to the pizza restaurant. We were only going to stay for a short while, but then one of Jennifer's old students, a gentleman named Tom, showed up and offered to buy us dinner.
A little about Tom: his birthday is October 17th, he is 41 years old. He owns an alcohol shipping company (is that right, Jennifer?) or some kind of business relating to alcohol. He started learning English a couple years ago and plans to study it for a couple more years. He wants to make his first million (RMB) in the next five years.
Tom was such a cool guy I invited him to my birthday party. We're going to eat pizza then go dancing.

This has been a great month for me. I can't wait to see what November brings. I've met a lot of really great people lately, I hope I can keep this up.

So.... no journal entries from me this weekend. Jennifer and I will probably come back Monday morning.

I had some great classes today. These kids may not like doing work, but I can see their English improving. I can also tell which students are not listening in class. Grr.
I still have millions of papers to grade, and I need to pack, we leave at 5pm tomorrow but I have class until 4:10.

Love, love!

Teacher? Can we watch more movies and do no work because we're lazy?

I've been busy grading papers all evening, and I still have a ton more to go, so no real update.

I think Jennifer is going with David to buy our tickets to Nanjing tomorrow which is exciting. I can't wait for this trip!

I just watched a really weird/interesting movie called Motel. I would recommend it. My dvd player and I have been battling all evening, but I finally got it to play The Other Boleyn Girl as well. Mwahaha.

Right, papers are calling my name.

P.S. I just looked through my papers from yesterday and two girls not only did only half of their dialogues but they wrote me a letter asking to watch more movies. Can you say, 'hell to the no'? 'Cause I sure did when I wrote her back. Geeeeeeez.

Here comes the bride....

Today we discussed different business options in the wedding industry during class. I spent an entire hour going over many (not all) of the career options available and how weddings were becoming a booming business in China.
I'm not sure the kids were really impressed, but I had fun. Everyone got a chance to present their dialogues, we talked about cake, and while the kids weren't thrilled that I gave them more work, we discussed something relevant to their major that wasn't their boring book.

I spent my afternoon watching Korean soap operas. I have a new favorite one, and yes, I do know what's going on.

My friend Felipe is living in Japan at the moment. He's become really gung-ho about learning the language lately, and he's inspiring me to do that same. The person I was hoping would teach me Chinese has ended up being a bit.... weird, as I think he would rather flirt that teach. This has left me with studying my books on my own and talking to nice people on the train and in the cabs for practice. It's actually not working out too badly, but it's a slow process. At some point I would like to not have to translate the Chinese to English in my head and just know it, but that's probably at least a year off. I feel bad when I travel with Nathan since he has to do all the talking. To be fair, though, I haven't had too much of a problem getting around, and people are really friendly when you even just make an attempt at speaking the language, even if they know you're not fluent.

This weekend Jennifer and I are planning a trip to Nanjing. I think that Nathan and Nikolai will meet us there, but their plans may change. I'm looking forward to meeting Chris Clanton and other foreigners... and eating Papa Johns pizza! Haha.

I've been thinking about South Korea next year. I'm going to talk to Cary about it since he lived there for a number of years, but it sounds great and I love the look of it. Both he and I are deciding what we plan to do in December. There are just so many options!

I have some revisions to make on my lesson plan now. Zaijian!

I may as well use my free time to post here....

Let's start with Nathan's birthday which was last Tuesday, shall we?
I taught my class, meaning we watched a movie because I couldn't let them get ahead of the other class then headed off to the train station with Sophie to get my ticket. Sophie waited with me at the station for awhile, then headed back to the campus while I waited for the train. It finally came after an hour of sitting in an overly-crowded room with hundreds of people staring at me. It happened to not only be the long train, but also a non-air conditioned one to boot. I spent a majority of time playing peek-a-boo with the babies sitting near me and listening the buzz of Chinese going on. Nathan was a little bit late to pick me up, which was fine, I made 'friends' with a cab driver who was rather eager to drive me around town. Nathan soon arrived and we caught a cab to the Thai place he wanted to eat at for his birthday lunch. Only... they were closed! We decided to come back for dinner and bring everyone with us instead.
We grabbed a cab and headed back to campus to drop off my bags and round everyone up. Then we (Simon, Pearl, Peter, Nikolai, Nathan, Luna, and I) all headed off to Banana Leaf for some dinner. While we were waiting for a table Nathan happened to run into one of the dancers who worked there that he knew from Beijing. Crazy! I took a picture of them reuniting so Nathan could show all his Beijing friends.

Dinner was delicious and expensive. We sang, danced, laughed, and gorged our way through a wonderful meal. The dance troupe sang 'Happy Birthday' to Nathan and made the two of us get up to dance. That didn't last too long, but it was rather funny.
After dinner we decided to hit up karaoke. Pearl and Peter went back to the campus, leaving the rest of us to party. After scouring the various karaoke joints we finally found one that was in our price range and to our taste. Two hours, many beers, and inevitable sore throats later, we finished up singing and headed back to the campus.

The next few days were uneventful. Nathan had work so I mostly stayed around his apartment watching movies and cleaning.

On Friday we headed back to Jiujiang for the evening as we couldn't get directly to Lushan easily from Nanchang. We slept in a bit on Saturday before packing up and heading out. We had decided that the easiest way to get to the mountain would be to just rent a car to head out there. Luckily for us a taxi was sitting just outside the gate as we headed out, and the driver turned out to be great. He drove us to the mountain and took us directly to a decent, if over-priced, hotel where we could drop off our bags and stay for the night. He also arranged for another cab to take us to the various sites for the rest of the day, and then even took us to a nice restaurant where we could have lunch. We decided that the restaurant was too expensive though, so our new cab driver, a woman, took us to a different place where we could get a moderately priced meal. After eating, we headed off to the sites. The first place our driver took us was a rather short hike where we could see some nice scenery. At one point I was accosted by a group of Chinese girls and 'forced' to take pictures.

When we had finished with this place, we found that our driver had somehow found a highly irritating tour guide for us. They took us to another part of the mountain where we had to buy a ticket for something, but we didn't know what. We soon realized it was for the gondolas and a long suspension bridge Nathan had wanted to see. Luckily the tour guide was too scared to go over the bridge so we soon lost her. There was some confusion as to where we were supposed to go from this point on, so we continued on the path and millions of stairs which lay before us. I was having some unpleasant flashbacks to Huangshan, but there were far fewer stairs. We even ran into a place where they kept monkeys!

The path spit us out with no cab driver, or rather not our cab driver, to be seen. Nathan gave her a call and she told one of the other cabbies to drive us back to where we had originated. He pointed us down another path then scuttled off. Not eager to conquer more stairs, we looked at each other, bewildered, before heading on. There was a nice lake to our right and some fun waterfalls and rivers to climb around along the path. We soon found the area we were meant to meet the driver and she came along to pick us up.

She then took us to Mao's villa, the building where the Lushan Conference was held, and a place where Kai Shek's soldiers had trained. We were soon wiped out and asked her to return us to our hotel.
We had dinner at a restaurant down the street before returning to our room and passing out in front of the tv.

The next morning we had thought there would be a lot to see in Guling, the small town we were staying in, but we were wrong. After walking the streets a few times and having an early lunch, we grabbed our bags and headed back to Jiujiang.
When we arrived in Jiujiang we decided to go Dvd shopping and get some McDonalds. We grabbed Jennifer and Cary and headed downtown. We perused the dvd racks for awhile, then Cary had to get back to campus. We said hasta to him and headed on to McDonalds for a feast of epic proportions. Just kidding, it was some chicken nuggets and fries, I'm not getting fat over here, ya'll.
Hrmm... somewhere in this sequence I left out that Nathan and I played badminton. Well... we did. It was fun. They were doing driving lessons where we were playing, but we didn't let that bother us.
Nathan left in the evening to catch a train back to Nanchang. Jennifer and I went grocery shopping at our local supermarket, then decided they didn't have what we wanted and headed downtown. We had the coolest cab driver in Jiujiang and had fun speaking our mangled Chinese with him. I'm pretty sure he would be the most awesome Chinese teacher ever, and I'm sad I didn't get his number to practice with. Hopefully I'll run into him again sometime.

This week I'm teaching my kids about the wedding industry. Since western style weddings are becoming more common here, I think it's something they would find interesting and beneficial. Plus, you all know how I love to talk about weddings.

Right. I'm out of here. Get well soon Dad and Tess!

Too tired

I'm home safe and sound. I'll update about Nathan's birthday and Lushan tomorrow instead.
New photos though!
Please enjoy this and this.

We're movin' and groovin'

Well... I went to Nanchang this past weekend.
One of my friends Sophie traveled with me since she's from Nanchang. It was a fun train ride. We decided to rough it in the non-air conditioned no assigned seat cars. We got there a bit late, which meant no open seats! Insane! However, we made friends with some jolly Chinese men who let us sit with them. I think it's good to have a foreigner with you sometimes.

Nathan met us at the train station. We really didn't do much the entire weekend. Ate Chinese food which made me sick. I'm avoiding meat now. We went to Metro which is like Sam's Club. Found foreign food and Nathan bought a nice leather jacket.

Today I made my Secretary's do work, which they didn't really like. Eh. They needed to learn something.
Tomorrow we're watching Man of the House in BE3 so I can teach them about Texas. Good times.

Back to Nanchang for Nathan's birthday tomorrow. We're going to Lushan on Friday. Exciting!
May not have internet access for a few days. Will update upon my return.

Let's talk about something else...

Today I had two great classes. I decided not to use the book again, and just taught them new vocabulary then let them take the reigns when it came to their dialogues. We got some pretty interesting ones. I love it when my kids are creative.
I've decided to chuck the book out the window. They already have to use it for their pronunciation and grammar classes, so I figure we can do something new in oral class.
I'm planning on teaching:
Anti-smoking, their assignment will be to come up with an anti-smoking ad
Olympics, we'll talk about China's economy during and after the Olympics
Halloween, that week is just going to be fun. I'm going to have them make masks out of paper plates
Thanksgiving
Christmas
Tanning vs Whitening culture
Tourism
Name brands and counterfits
Resumes
Job interviews
Social Networking sites
Universities
Obesity and Exercise

I'm pretty excited. I'll have to come up with some more lessons, but those are my starters.

Tomorrow I head to Nanchang to hang out with Nathan. I still haven't heard from David, so I guess I'll be going with Sophie. No sweat off my back.

I'm wiped. I'll respond to e-mails sometime this weekend. :)
xoxo

Delicious

I have the best mom in the whole world. I got THREE packages today. Happy!!!

My apartment is now decorated for halloween. To be honest, it makes me so happy to have these up, they may just stay up all year. We'll see.

I spent an hour putting together goody bags for the classes I have on halloween. Lucky ducks.

I'm so excited!!!

I also got my birthday presents from Grandma and Grandpa. Thank you! The dresses are gorgeous, and I am so excited to wear the shirt.

Today while walking to class I saw a girl wearing a 'Life is Better Blonde' shirt. It amused me to no end, I should have taken a picture with her.

Class went much better today. I toned down the lesson a bit, and I think they understood a bit more. Asking them to think outside the box, or book, I should say, is almost too much for them. It's a shame, really. These kids are intelligent, they just never really use it to their advantage.

That creepy show, Hello Teddy, is on right now. Instead of saying, "No purple" the dog said, "Nople". Eef. I still really feel bad for the girl on this show, she must hate her job. Her eyes are dead.

Had a nice chat with Lindsey today also. I tried to talk her into moving to China, but it didn't work. Haha. Maybe when I move to a bigger city next year. :)

Oh! I think I'm going to have a birthday party at David's pizza place the Saturday before my birthday. Hooray! I'm really excited about it. Then we're going to go out to a club or something of the like. I love that Halloween is on a Friday and my birthday is on a Sunday. Perfection. What a great way to turn 23.

Right, I'm off to have a bath and study Chinese.

Nippy day

Today was a little bit chilly so I talked Jennifer into going downtown with me in order to find a coat.

Well... we didn't find a coat, but I did find some great sweaters that I can wear instead. Every single cute coat we found had only 3/4 length sleeves. What the heck? This makes no sense to me at all. We practiced our limited Chinese with the shop keepers and our fellow customers and had a pretty good time with it all. I found my new favorite shop, it was filled with Coach, Gucci, and Louis Vuitton purses!!!! I bought myself a nice little Gucci one. I'm thinking I'll get myself an LV for my birthday present. Lovely. The shop keeper knew her brands and was quite a character. I hope my Chinese becomes good enough I can make friends with her. She kept saying 'pengyou' (friend) to Jennifer and I. We couldn't figure out if her friend owned the shop, or maybe she wanted to be friends... or perhaps she though Jennifer and I were girlfriends? Eh. Who knows.
We ended our shopping trip at David's pizza place where we got to chat with him before he had to run off to celebrate old people's day with his grandparents. He said he may drive me to Nanchang this weekend, which would be great. He's fun to talk to, and maybe I can practice my Chinese with him. He lets me sing S-Club 7 in his car, so you know it'll be a good drive.
Jennifer and I managed to really piss off a cab driver on our way home. He didn't want to drive us to the school because it was on the other side of town, but we pretty much just sat there pretending we didn't know what he was saying until he drove us home. He was pretty polite when he dropped us off though.

Oh! I may have found a Chinese tutor. He's a fellow teacher here at the school, and he lives in the hotel! His name is Aaron. Super nice guy. I always run into him at the elevator after we get out of classes. Fingers crossed he'll help me out.

I'm looking forward to the week being over. I think this is due to us having a nice hefty break next week more than anything. Also because I'm utterly exhausted from last week.

I finally located the orphanage in Jiujiang. Rather, I found the address for it. Hamlin is going to find out its exact location and let me know. Hopefully we can set up some volunteer stuff with that. Cary said he would come too. Can't wait! I have so much time open in the mornings on Monday and the afternoons on Tuesday and Wednesday, it would be nice to spend it doing some good. We'll see.

Right. I have some school stuff to revise, then early bed for me tonight. Tomorrow is Wednesday, which means only two more days until the weekend (after class that is). Hooray!

I got nothin'...

Nothing of interest to report.

This evening Jennifer and I went to the bookstore. I picked up a book on the WTO and Pride and Prejudice along with a ton of Business English books that are a million times better than the textbook the school provided.
Yeah... I'm done with that book.

I also picked up some Christmas presents. I'm thinking it's just going to have to be a stocking stuffer year since mailing things will be expensive. I also got Nathan a little something for his birthday to go along with our planned trip to Lushan for next weekend.

Speaking of Lushan, looks like a pretty awesome place full of interesting history. I'm about half-way through Wild Swans which is all about the Communist Revolution, and Mt. Lu was where the Lushan Conference was held. Read about it here.
Mao and Chiang Kai Shek both had homes here which are still open to the public. Apparently Mao had a western style toilet.


I think I'm finally starting to feel all that lack of sleep over my vacation.

Next week we don't have classes on Wed, Thurs, or Fri. Nice. It's sports day or something. Rock on, brutha.

Huangshan

I'm breaking this one down into days. This is going to be a long one.


Monday: Originally I had sought to depart on Sunday, but not only were the trains full, there was only one bus heading to Huangshan and it left while I was in the middle of teaching. Obviously I had no choice but to leave on Monday instead. This actually turned out to benefit me, because instead of having to take a cab into town and figure out the complicated bus system (which really is complicated when you're on a limited Chinese vocabulary), I was fortunate enough to have Hamlin, the driver, and Jennifer drop me off at the bus station on their way to Nanchang (where Jennifer was being awarded a prestigious 'Friend of Jiangxi' medal). Hamlin explained to the ticket collecting lady that my Chinese was bu hao (not good) and asked her to let me know when the bus would be departing and which bus is would be. After waiting for about half an hour the lady came over to where I was sitting, collected my ticket, and pointed towards a bus. Unfortunately, there were about three buses in the general direction of where she pointed, but I had the good sense to ask if it was the bai-se (white) bus to which she nodded. The bus drivers assistant took my bag and I boarded the bus. Since I was there so early I got the chance to snag the window seat, which I don't think that the Chinese woman sitting next to me would have wanted anyway since she seemed to have an aversion to sun. (Isn't it strange how most Chinese women want to be pale and most Americans want to be tan?)


The bus ride was fairly uneventful. We did end up stopping three times, once for lunch where the bus drivers assistant tried to goad me into lunch (er... no, I don't think I want to eat rest stop Chinese food the day before I'm supposed to climb a mountain, thanks). We stopped two more times to get mechanical parts for the bus, although I'm not quite sure what was broken. I took some pictures out the window as we whizzed through the countryside seeing beautiful site after beautiful site. Living in the city sometimes makes me forget how beautiful China really can be.
We arrived in Huangshan Shi (the city of Huangshan, also known as Tunxi) around 4:00pm. This gave me just enough time to get my return bus ticket to Jiujiang for Friday from the ticket office and ask where the bus heading in the direction of Taiping was located. I managed to find it after calling out 'Taiping' a few times. After settling in to my seat I noticed a bai-ren had stepped onto the bus with a Chinese friend. They sat behind me and we immediately introduced ourselves as they handed me a can of coffee. Noimi and Peng, my newest best friends. While we were introducing ourselves an older woman came around to ask us which cities we were headed to so she could charge us the correct amount. I was headed to Tan-jia-qiao which brought forth a confused look from the woman. Uh-oh. That wasn't good. Luckily in the seat across from me a young Chinese man knew exactly where it was and informed the woman who promplty charged me 25rmb and moved on down the bus. I thanked the guy and went back to talking to Noimi who was from Italy and Peng who was Chinese but had studied in Italy. It was an interesting conversation of broken English in which we talked about Italy, girlfriends and boyfriends, studying Chinese, and climbing the mountain. The young Chinese gentleman who had helped me with the older woman jumped off at one of the stops, but not before I implored him to ask the older woman to let me know when we got to Tan-jia-qiao. My two new friends got off in Tangkou, but not before we exchanged numbers in case we wanted to meet at the mountain.
Once again I was on my own. We drive for another forty-five minutes then stopped. The older woman started yelling and pointing at me, so I figured this was my stop... but... we were in the middle of nowhere! There were about three buildings around and lots of mountains and fields, surely this wasn't it? Another young man stood up and told me to come with him, that this was indeed our stop.
As the bus drove away, a small amount of panic began to set it. The young man told me his friend worked at the hostel I was heading to and that he needed to call him. We saw a building with the name of the hostel on it, but it was closed. Luckily the woman who owned a restaurant in the building was walking up just as we were getting off the bus. She let us use the phone so my new pal could call his friend to come pick us up. We waited around for about 15 minutes before the friend showed up. When he finally did show up, I couldn't believe my eyes... he was riding a motorbike. My new friend grabbed my black bag and told me to follow him.
Wait.
Wait.
We're getting on that thing?!
I got on behind the boy who was driving and clutched on to him for dear life. My new friend got on behind me, holding my bag under one arm. Then we took off, two Chinese men and a white girl on a motorbike.
Honestly, I wish I had a video or pictures of the whole thing. It was exhilarating, it was terrifying, it was an adventure. The ride was about 20 minutes long through winding country semi-unfinished roads. Luckily there were very few cars around for us to worry about.
When we arrived at the hostel I released my death grip on the driver and got off the bike. My friend handed me my bag and said goodbye, then the two drove off. What a way to start off a trip.
I checked in to the hostel and was told two Americans were staying in room 222, and would I like to room with them? I heartily said 'yes!' and we walked up to the room where I met Liz and Katie. We immediately hit it off. They are both students on the, get this, USAC Shanghai program. They had arrived in town a few hours earlier and had been resting and finding out about spending the night on the mountain in order to watch the sunrise. They asked me if I would like to share a tent with them on the peak, which was an opportunity I couldn't pass up. Katie called the hotel on the mountain and reserved some tents for us for the next night.
The girls had heard of a music concert going on in town so we decided to head down to where it was being held. It was just up the street at the bus station where all the locals were crowding. We were a bit hungry so we ordered some rice with vegetables and sat down to enjoy the music. The local children all found us so amusing and we talked to them and took pictures with them quite a bit. After eating our dinner we stood up so we could be closer to the stage. I saw my motorcycle pengyous (friends) again, but they were busy with the concert. Some of the music was great, some of it was so-so, but the atmosphere was fun and the locals were nice. After being there for a couple hours we decided to pick up some supplies and head back for a good nights sleep. Liz found sparklers in one of the shops, so she bought some for us to enjoy. The shop-keeper lit them for us and then took pictures for me.

We bought some snacks for the next day then hit the sack.


Tuesday: We woke up extremely early so as to catch the first bus to Tangkou. We grabbed breakfast from a street vendor, scallion pancakes (which were delicious), then caught the bus in front of our hostel. Liz and Katie wanted to drop off their bags with Mr. Hu (an English speaking restaurant owner who is recommended in Lonely Planet) because they planned on heading to a different town the next day. We caught the first bus which took us to the road where I had first been dropped off on Monday. We caught the next bus there which took us into Tangkou (the town right next to the mountain). When we got to Tangkou we found a little shop where the girls bought smaller backpacks to take up the mountain and other supplies, then we walked further into town.

It was a bit of a process finding Mr. Hu due to the fact that his restaurant had moved since Lonely Planet last talked to him. Luckily, Katie had a phone number for him and he came to pick us up to take us back to his restaurants new location. The girls dropped off their bags and Mr. Hu drove us to the East Sea Gate. We each paid him 5 yuan (Mr. Hu the extortionist...) then bought our tickets to the park.
The East Sea Gate is actually then entrance to the Nine-Dragons Waterfall park, after we passed through here, we would enter the actual mountain park. It truly was beautiful, and a nice way to start what would be a very long and tiring hike.

We made a lot of friends during our walk through Nine Dragons Waterfall park. Took countless pictures with them. One gentleman was kind enough to give us oranges in exchange for taking pictures with him. This is China.
Our hike through Nine Dragons Waterfall park was about 5 km, mostly uphill. By the time we reached the Yungu Temple Station (the main entrance to the park on the east side and a place to catch the tram), I was a bit fatigued. We found other bai-ren (white people) and asked if they planned to hike up the mountain to which they replied 'No!', we asked why and one guy said he had about 70lbs worth of booze and equipment in his backpack, supplies for when they camped on the mountain. Katie found out where the entrance gate to the mountain was located and we headed in that direction, eager to get away from the large groups of Chinese tourists that were all waiting for the tram. We paid another entrance fee (I was clever enough to bring my old student id and thus only paid half-price, 100rmb) and started our way up the mountain.
It quickly became apparent that Katie was much more of a mountain climber than Liz and I. We told her to go on without us and that we would meet her at the top. She obliged and hurried up the thousands of stairs ahead of us. Liz and I started off pretty strong, taking those stairs with vigor. About half-way up we began to reach our breaking point and had to take quite a few breaks so that our legs wouldn't give out. I sucked down quite a bit of albuterol on the way up those stairs. We sang Eye of the Tiger, took pictures, talked in funny accents, anything we could come up with to keep us going. I think the thin air may have gone to our heads a bit.


One of the best moments on the hike up was getting a chance to see some monkeys hanging out in the trees near the path. They didn't get close enough for us to really see them properly though.
As we were climbing the air was getting colder but we were getting hotter. When we finally reached the summit after 6.5km we were clad only in tank tops and jeans, but it was cold enough to see our breath. Cloud surrounded us to the point where you couldn't see 5 feet in front of your face. We quickly wrapped up in our sweaters and jackets and made our way (another half-hour of stairs) to the Beihai Hotel.
When we got to the Beihai there were hundreds of people there setting up tents and settling in for the night. We asked a lady where we could find our tent and instead she led us inside the hotel. Liz and I sat in the lobby and left the negotiating up to Katie who's Chinese is far superior to ours. When she came back down she told us we were going to stay in a room in the hotel instead of a tent, we agreed that was a great idea since we really weren't properly equipped to sleep in a tent when it was about 40 F outside. The staff led us upstairs into this crazy ballroom sized room which was filled with bunk beds and mattresses. They weren't officially supposed to allow people to stay here, but this room was packed. We got a semi-private room in the back which was filled with bunk beds. Four Chinese gentlemen, all snorers, eventually ended up in the spare beds. We mostly spent the evening in our room since we were exhausted from the hike and saw no reason to wander around outside when you couldn't see anything anyways. We had pot noodles for dinner and spoke with some of the people who were hanging out in the area of our room. One gentleman offered to wake us up so we could head to the best spot to see the sunrise in the morning.

We hit the hay pretty early but I didn't sleep but a wink. Between all the activity going on outside our room, personal issues, and the snoring men, it was a bit too much. I nodded off for about an hour before someone came into our room and turned on the lights at 4:30am.

Wednesday: As I said, we woke up at 4:30am to fluorescent lights and the sounds of other people getting ready to see the sunrise. I had intelligently taken advil before I went to bed and I immediately took two more when I woke up. We packed up our gear then followed everyone outside so that we could hike to the Meteorological Observatory as a group. It was still dark and foggy outside but I had bought a flashlight a couple nights before which came in handy as we climbed even more stairs. I had to take breaks because I was so sore and a bit sick feeling. Liz and Katie trudged on while I rested. When we finally arrived at the Meteorological Observatory there were hundreds of people there. I found some tents that were set up on a ledge and went to stand by them. The sun rose around 5:30am, but it was so foggy it wasn't near as amazing as it could have been. Shame.

I couldn't find Katie or Liz in the throng of Chinese tourists all gearing up to clamber down the mountain. I figured I would find them on the path down so I headed out. I took what is called the most beautiful route down the mountain, it's the central path, and the one Nathan and Sarah climbed up when they came to Huangshan in 2005.
As I made my way down, the fog began to burn off. I decided to take it slowly as I had the entire day to get to the bottom and no real plans for what to do once I was finished descending. I went up and down several of the side paths which led to scenic vantage points. Along the way I made tons of new 'friends' who wanted to take pictures of me. My favorite was a large group of Chinese tourists who were just so excited to take a picture with a foreigner and were all extremely polite and funny. The walk was beautiful and despite my shaking legs, I enjoyed it immensely. Near the top was a large rock you could climb where people had placed locks on the chain fence (you have your initials put on the locks and supposedly your love lasts as long as the locks are there, or something to that effect). The views from here were intense and made more so by the fog lifting.


One of my favorite moments was sitting on 'Mattress Rock' with another Chinese man and enjoying the view. We sat there for about an hour watching the clouds wrap themselves around the mountain and enjoying the people walking by.

Eventually I said goodbye to the gentleman and made my way further down the path. There were hundreds of people attempting a similar task though, so at some points it proved quite difficult.

There are several stops on the way down the mountain where you can buy (expensive) food and drinks. I stopped at quite a few and bought myself a hot dog on a stick, tasty.

Once I had climbed down past where people could catch the tram at the Jade Screen Station it was a lot less crowded. Cheaters. I even saw quite a number of people being carried in these bamboo chairs.


I ran into a large group of foreigners on my way down but decided against joining them. I was having too much fun making my way down at my own pace and they seemed intent to rocket down the mountain. Along the way I found a place where they were etching initials into locks to put on the chain fences. I bought two, one with 'N and J' on it and one with 'Aaron J M' on it. I intended to leave them on the mountain, but there were no more fences on my way down. I decided to leave Aaron's at Monkey Park since one of my fondest memories of him was seeing him running from the monkeys at Emei and how we laughed afterward.


I reached the 'bottom' aka the park exit around 1pm. After the exit there were still several more stairs I had to clamber down before I made it to the true bottom of the mountain. I sat down to have a rest near one of the hotels when I was approached by a Chinese gentleman. We struck up a conversation and he asked me what I was planning to do with the rest of my day. I told him I wanted to go to Monkey Park to see the monkeys. He was delighted because he'd been there just the other day with his group. One of the young boys in the group brought over his camera to show me pictures of the monkeys. The gentleman offered me a ride to Tangkou where he and his group (he was there with a group from his work) would pick up their cars. He said it would be no problem to drop me off at Monkey Park.
I joined them on the bus to Tangkou where we walked to their hotel. When we got to the hotel the man apologized and said that his coworkers wanted to get home and they could not drop me off at Monkey Park. He said he had asked the hotel to drop me off but it would be 50 yuan. Scammed.
I walked off disgusted and refused the ride. As I was walking I was approached by a woman who sold tea next to the side of the road to passing tourists. She offered to call someone up for me to take me for 30 yuan. I agreed because all I really wanted to do was get to the damn park by that point. Unfortunately, the woman couldn't get a hold of her contact. I was burnt out at this point, climbing up and down the mountain coupled with lack of sleep had drained me. She flagged down a cab for me, but the man said he didn't want to head up to Monkey Park.
Bleh, I was seemingly out of options.
I was about to give up hope when another woman who sold tea came up and offered to walk with me there since she lived next to the park. She said it was only 5 li away and beckoned me to follow her.
I did.
We semi-communicated with my terrible Chinese as we walked through people's back yards, up roads, through neighborhoods, and finally up a mountain. I had to ask to rest a couple times (a new word I learned on the mountain!) because 5 li is actually a bit far when you're drained. The scenery was stunning and I'm sure I would have enjoyed the walk a lot more if I hadn't just climbed up and down Huangshan.

We finally made it to Monkey Park where she showed me the ticket box then the bridge to cross to enter the park. We sat down to rest for a bit and I bought a couple cans of tea from her at 10rmb each to show my appreciation. I would have paid her anyway. She said goodbye and I thanked her profusely to which she told me it was no problem. I waved goodbye then crossed the bridge into Monkey Park.

I was incredibly not thrilled to discover that more stairs awaited me. I decided I would just take them a few at a time with many breaks in between. My legs were jello at this point.

Somehow I managed to make my way to the top where I found people feeding some mean looking monkeys. I snapped pictures and made my way back down to the ticket booth where there were benches. Unfortunately there had been no fences for me to put Aaron's lock on in the park. I decided to hold on to it. I was beyond dehydrated at this point and had no water. The nice lady at the ticket booth filled up my plastic sandwich box for me with hot water which I drank, crumbs and all.

There were no taxis about so I called the hostel and asked them to send one out for me. I had to wait about an hour for the driver to make his way out to the park from the town the hostel was in. I made more friends and took more pictures with people during that time. It was dusk when I finally sat down in the cab and boy was I eager to get back.
The cab driver was insane.
I told him pretty much from the get go I didn't speak much Chinese. I think he just enjoyed talking and asking me questions anyways. We almost got into a wreck twice and at one point I went knees first into the dashboard. It seemed his intent was to go around every winding mountain curve as quickly as possible. I'm pretty sure he said something along the lines of, "Don't you wish you spoke Chinese so you could tell me to slow down?" when he saw me holding onto the door for dear life. When we got back to the hostel I quickly climbed out, bought a pot noodle, and headed to my room to eat.
During this time I had been communicating with Nathan via text message and talked him into coming to Huangshan Shi from Wuhan to see the Huashan Mysterious Grottoes with me. He had managed to get a ticket on an overnight bus and would be arriving between 5-6am the next morning in the city (which was an hour away from me). I went downstairs to the front desk and arranged for a cab to the city, it was going to cost me a pretty penny (220rmb) but they told me I could leave at 5am. I asked them to call the hostel in Huangshan Shi to see if they had any rooms available. No luck. They did offer up a patch of floor if I was desperate enough though, nice folks. At that point I was too tired to worry about it and figured we would just find a hotel when we got to the city. I showered and fell into bed.

Thursday: I woke up at 4:30am for the second morning in a row and packed up my stuff. My legs were in terrible shape from the day before and I managed to fall down the stairs on my way to the desk. Somehow I picked myself up, checked out, and headed to the cab. This driver was really good, he actually used his blinkers in the correct way and didn't speed too much. What a relief. Nathan had actually sent me a message a little after I woke up saying he had already arrived in the city and was napping on the couch in a hotel.
I got to Huangshan Shi around 6am. The driver dropped me off at the bus station where I picked up a ticket to Jiujiang for Friday for Nathan. I found the hotel he was camping out in and headed in. Nathan was fast asleep on the couch with a Chinese couple sitting on the opposite couch watching him sleep. They laughed when I pulled off his hood and woke him up.
Nathan grabbed his stuff and we went up to the desk to see if they had any rooms. Mei you. No rooms. We decided to grab a cab and have the driver drive us around the hotels to find a place to stay. The cab driver was very obliging, but we had no luck with the two hotels we tried. We made the executive decision to just head out to the grottoes. The driver said he would take us for 50 yuan, which was fine with us.
When we arrived at the grottoes it was still closed. The weather was foggy and a bit on the nippy side. The driver found the caretaker of the grottoes and had him open up for the day. We bought our tickets (70rmb) and asked if we could leave our bags at the front gate. They said it would be no problem, and after removing our valuables we were on our way.
Along the way we passed the horses which I wanted to ride quite badly. Nothing was really open yet though so we headed on to the gate. It looked gorgeous in the mist.


The fog eventually began to lift as we walked through the park. We went to the first cave which was pretty big. The temperature inside was warm and it was full of clear pools of water. Nathan made a wish in one of the pools, though I'm still not sure what he was wishing for.

We didn't stay there long, opting to getting away from the tour groups which rather suddenly had appeared. Along the way we saw some amazing birds with crazy long tails and huge spider webs.

We were somewhat hungry so we attempted to stop for food at a restaurant. Only, the restaurant didn't have food. Only pot noodles and overpriced tea. We moved on.

Nathan and I soon ran into a lake. Ah. Where to go from here? There were people with boats ready to take us across to the next side, but we opted for a far more fun option.

While waiting for the boat man to bring us our bike-boat, Nathan made friends with a sweet little white kitty. It followed us around until we got on the bike-boat. I was sad to leave it behind.

Riding across the lake in the fog was awesome. We discovered ducks, geese, and black swans along the way. The mist gave everything a bit of an eerie feeling, but we had a good time. The lake was pretty big and we got a nice workout from all the peddling.


After boating we walked up the path and found another cave to explore. However, this one was only viewable by boat and we needed a ticket. The boatman told us we could buy a ticket at the tea shop, so we headed that way. The tea shop ended up having food available so we lunched on noodles there and rested up. When we were finished eating we bought our tickets and headed back to the cave where we got into a bamboo boat. Our boat driver sang to us while we drifted through the cave and took us through some rather low underpasses.

After the boat ride/cave exploration, we headed onward and upward. We walked to the peak of the mountain we were on and Nathan went to explore while I recovered from all the stairs we had just walked up.

We found another cave to explore, but it was small and pretty uninteresting. Some of the Chinese tourists tried to take pictures of us, which caused Nathan to tell them it would cost them 5 yuan. We all chuckled over that.

The last cave we went to was probably the biggest one in the park. It was packed with tour groups, but since it was so large we had no problem keeping away from them for the most part. It was fascinating to see all of the rooms and pools throughout the cave, especially since it's all supposed to be man-made.

Post cave exploration we decided to find the hot springs, something we were both looking forward to quite a bit. We debated on which road to take and whether or not to pick up our bags. I voted on taking the down-sloping way and not picking up our bags. As we left the park through the back entrance, we asked how far it was to the hot springs from there. 'Not far', they said.
We started walking down the road towards the countryside and away from the park gate. There wasn't much along the road other than fields with farmers working on their land. We walked quite a ways not seeing anything that even remotely resembled hot springs.

We finally reached a small village area and asked a shop keeper where these springs were located. He said a few kilometers away.
WHAT?!
We decided the most logical course of action was to hop on a bus and see where it took us. We were both exhausted and over-heated by that point and a bus ride didn't sound like a bad plan at all.
We caught the bus and headed off. As we were driving into the city of Huangshan Shi I saw the hot springs on our left. We had found it! We asked the bus driver to let us off and caught a cab back to the hot springs. The staff there were incredibly kind and we asked them if they had a hotel there also. They did! They got us a car to drive us down the short road to the hotel where we checked in. Boy was this place posh and brand spankin' new (a lot of the rooms weren't finished being built, and the elevators didn't work yet... great, more stairs as they put us on the third floor). We asked them to call us a cab so we could go back to pick up our bags from the grottoes where we had left them.

We picked up our bags without a glitch, then headed back to the hotel. We napped for a couple hours before deciding to walk up the street to the springs. They gave us a discount since we were staying at the hotel attached to the property which was a nice bonus. The staff gave us these electronic bracelets which were used to open the lockers, pretty nifty.
Nathan and I were led off to the men and women's changing rooms respectively. I was a bit shocked to see so many naked Chinese women standing around 'shooting the shit' as it were. I changed into my bathing suit, put my clothes in my locker, and headed out to the common area to meet Nathan.
We were pretty hungry by that point so we ordered dinner, more noodles, before tub hopping. The noodles were quite delicious, though over-priced. We put the food on our tab, signed it, and headed off to the pools.
There were a number of different flavors, most of which I honestly can't remember. I know we tried the ginger, ginseng, rose, milk, and orange pools at least. It wasn't too crowded, luckily, and the atmosphere was pretty relaxing. The staff was great and we were given fresh towels every now and then. After a couple hours we were exhausted so we headed back to the changing rooms.
The female staff were absolutely appalled that I took a shower in my bathing suit and just put on my clothes over my suit. They implored me to put on their clothes and go upstairs for a rest, but I waved them off and headed out to meet Nathan.
We paid for dinner and our entrance fees after exiting and headed back to the hotel.

We passed out pretty early since we knew we had to get to the bus station around 8am the next morning.

Friday: Nathan and I woke up early to pack and get ready for the bus. Somehow I managed to flood the bathroom while taking a shower, but luckily they have a drain in the middle of the floor in case such a thing happens. Nathan had asked the hotel to call us a cab, but they hadn't done so for some reason by the time we got downstairs. We took care of our deposit paperwork, and they called their company van for us instead.
The van drove us to the station for free, which was great. We got there in plenty of time and picked up some snacks, going through a store which strangely enough allowed us to bypass security.
We hopped on our bus and were off back to Jiujiang. The bus stopped a couple times, once to let Nathan pee, and once for lunch. Lunch wasn't all that satisfying and was ridiculously overpriced.
We arrived back in Jiujiang in the afternoon and headed to the school. We were going to get Nathan a train ticket to Nanchang, but put it off since we were just ready to stop traveling.
We hung out around the apartment for a bit then decided to go out to the pizza place for dinner. Jennifer joined us for dinner which, I think, was the first time she had been out of the house all week. The pizza was great, and David was there, so we got to hang out with him for a bit. We tried to talk him into coming to DXD club with us, but he had other plans. Shame.
We walked around trying to find an atm for Nathan after pizza. That gave us a chance to walk off some of the food we had just consumed which was good. After grabbing money, we walked to the DXD where we met up with Cary.
DXD was fun. Nathan called up the manager we had met last time we were there. It was his night off, but he came to hang out with us anyways. The dancers had many costume changes, and there were some awesome rapper/break dancers there.


I still can't get over how weird they dance here.
We left the club pretty early, Nathan wasn't feeling too good after all the pizza. We went to bed when we got home.

Saturday: Nathan and I woke up pretty early. We decided that McDonalds and dvd shopping were in order. First we headed out to the train station to get Nathan a ticket back to Nanchang. We then headed to McD's where I enjoyed delicious chicken nuggets and french fries. Mmm. After eating we headed off to find the dvd store. I had completely forgotten where it was located and it took us a few minutes walking through the rain to find it, but we finally did. I bought some great movies and a few gifts for people. We spent the afternoon having a movie marathon. We watched Murder on the Orient Express, The Happening, The Beast, Gwendolyn, and a few others. Most of them were pretty bad movies, but we always have fun watching them.

Sunday: Today! Nathan left this morning which stunk. I'll see him next weekend in Nanchang though. We're planning on finding the Metro which is a giant store that has foreign imported food. The quest for cheese continues. Today I have lesson planning to do and research on Lushan. Nathan and I are going out there for his birthday.

The end.