My national holiday

For the week-long national holiday, I decided (for several reasons) to stick around my town and explore.  I had spent the past three weekends visiting volunteers, in Chengdu and in Chongqing.  I had heard there are a lot of beautiful places around my school and I wanted to take advantage of the time to explore some of those places. Plus, so many people travel during the holidays that I figured it would be more pleasant, and less stressful, to avoid long train rides and crowded train stations.

I mentioned previously that I went to visit my host family again on Sunday.  I was hoping we could go to a park because Jerry had told me we would, but instead we just sat around and ate. We played Uno because he’d asked me to bring the cards, and while I was grateful for having Uno the first time I had stayed with the host family to break the tension and pass the time, I am getting so sick of that game because my students always want to play it. We also watched part of Resident Evil and the Sorcerer’s Apprentice (which I actually kind of liked).  Don’t get me wrong, I love eating, playing cards, and watching movies, but I don’t know why we couldn’t go to the park. I was looking forward to running around with the kids because I don’t get much exercise at site and it sounded like fun. Maybe next time?

Monday I went with Mary and Eva (a second-year student who’s really smart and earned a scholarship to attend school) to Fo Ye Dong which was a beautiful place.  From downtown, we took a small van about half an hour outside of town, past countless rice fields and farmers’ houses.  Once we got there, we walked through caves illuminated by blue, red, and green fluorescent lights- it was like Christmas! The rock formations on the walls and ceilings were amazing, and the lights really enhanced the crevices and nooks and crannies. Every once in a while we came across a mini shrine or a series of statues. After walking over slippery stones and steps through the artificially illuminated tunnels, we discovered that the only way out was via a short boat ride over the underground river.  The boatman paddled us through with a shovel (Chinese people are so resourceful!), and sometimes we had to duck our heads to avoid getting scraped by a low ceiling or a low-hanging stalactites.  Soon we emerged into the sunlight and found ourselves on a beautiful river.  We disembarked, and followed the path across a bridge farther down the river to a temple.  After looking at the temple, we hiked up the steps to a stone forest.  There was a giant (and by giant I mean close to 100 feet tall) swing which I of course rode on!  Fo Ye Dong was a beautiful place and definitely worth visiting, although it was followed by a less-than-stellar meal at a restaurant outside the park.

Cave shrine

So pretty!  I guess Chinese caves will have to substitute looking at Christmas lights on people's houses in December.

"Don't crush me!!"

Eva and I on the little boat

Watch your head!

Temple

Stone forest, as they call it

The EPIC swing. Mary has the picture of me on the swing.

Tuesday we went to a park dedicated to Jiangyou’s famous poet, Li Bai.  The day basically consisted of snacking on delicious street food and junk food.  I ate a delicious sandwich made with fried bread, ham, and some spicy sauce, and fried potato wedges with spices.  We wondered through the park, and fed biscuits to the colorful fishies.  The best part was going on bumper cars, which is always so much fun.  I don’t know why, but every time I bumped into someone or was bumped into, I just started busting up laughing. There was one guy in another car who seemed to get a kick out of my laugh, because every time I laughed, he would smile really big, which made my day because I love making other people happy.

The story behind these statues is that the middle guy is drunk... is that supposed to be Li Bai, the famous poet? I'm not sure.

Bumper cars

forever young

"Feed us more biscuit!!"
There was one really fat fish hanging around with his mouth open and I made it a game to see how many times I could land a piece of biscuit in his open mouth. Final score: 3 out of 5

Wednesday, Mary’s friend, Catherine (or Caty, the 17 I mentioned in the other post) and her student, Tobey (a girl- isn’t that a cute name for a girl?) visited us from near Chengdu.  We spent that day baking breads (pear, apple, and pumpkin) for Caty to take home (she wanted to give them as gifts to some of the staff and workers at her school, and she doesn’t have an oven at her place).  Mary made a delicious quiche for dinner and we also had some noodles for only ¥3 ($.50), and then some pumpkin pie.  We got Caty hooked on the TV show, “Being Human,” which is about a ghost, a vampire, and a werewolf who are friends.

Friday we went to Bai Long Gong (which means White Dragon Palace), which was another place with brightly illuminated caves because Caty had not been to such a place yet.  We found some tables inside so we had a little picnic inside the cave, of yellow cake, popcorn, sunflower seeds, and peanuts.  I think it was cheaper than Fo Ye Dong, but it was also smaller, and once you leave the cave, you just walk a short path back to where the bus drops people off.  It was fun, but not as cool as the boat ride and hiking that Fo Ye Dong had.  There was a boat ride at Bai Long Gong inside the cave, which was optional but we took for the fun of it.  The guy let us get out and cheap out this awesome underground waterfall. Normally, they give you a free ride over, and then you have to pay to be taken back, otherwise you can walk for free on this little path along the water.  We opted for the latter, but for whatever reason the guy decided to take us back for free.  To thank him, Mary wanted to give him the leftover yellow cake, but when he started to refuse (as is custom), Mary ran behind him and placed the cake on his table, and then ran away yelling every Chinese word she knows: “Zai jian! Xie xie! Hen mei! Hen hao!” (Goodbye! Thank you! Very beautiful! Very good!).  The man, and other visitors, all started laughing, as did Caty and I.  Mary said later that she didn’t have the patience to follow that Chinese custom of gift-giving.  It was hilarious to see her drop the cake and then yell to Caty, Sunflower, and I, “Run, go go go!” followed by her stream of random Chinese words.

...an electric WHAT??!!!  Oh broken English, why do you have to leave me in suspense??  

Awesome underground waterfall! I did feel  a little nervous standing on that tiny rickety platform...

"The safe and careful road in attention is slinnery".... hahaha!!!

The sketchy toilet we used

You go in these barely partitioned cubicles and do your business in a collective trough. Lovely!

This was a hotel before the 2008 earthquake

On Saturday, we took the same train as Caty to Chengdu, where she left to take her bus back home, while Mary, Sunflower, and I went to Ikea.  We were met by Sunflower’s classmate, Jolene (her Chinese name is Zhou Ling which sounds exactly like Jolene so that’s what we call her).  Now, you may be wondering, why would you pay for a train ticket somewhere just to go to Ikea?  First of all, they have cheap western food like hot dogs and Swedish meatballs!  But more importantly, it’s actually a great cultural experience for the students: they can walk through models of western-style bedrooms, kitchens, and living rooms and see how other people in the world might decorate their houses.  They also got to try the western food, although I think they weren’t super wild about the hot dogs and ketchup.  They were also asking for the English names of different pieces of furniture. 

Beyond educational and cultural exchange purposes, though, it was a lot of fun to lie on beds and lounge on sofas and comfy chairs (they don’t care if you do that at the Ikea here- score!).  Plus both of the girls found some useful items.  The only tricky thing is that we had to drag them out of the store when it was getting closer to the time we had to leave to catch our train, which is difficult in Ikea when you have to go through everything before you can get to the exit.  They kept wanting to stop and look at things, and every few minutes Mary and I had to stop and yell for them to come.  I didn’t want to stop their fun, but I knew we still had to walk back to the metro, wait for the metro to come, and get back to the train station and make our way through the crowds to our train.   As I mentioned, we got on the train with only five minutes to spare but we would have missed it if we had let Sunflower follow the Chinese custom of gift-giving refusal.

There it is- Chinese Ikea, in all its glory

Awesome pillow case