May Holiday..."Golden" week ....riiiiight

So Clayton and I will be leaving for the May holiday vacation tonight...it might be a disaster because everyone in china is traveling at this time (a billion people with the same holiday...you'd think they'd change that!), but it should be an interesting adventure! We are going to Hubei Province, located south of Shandong. It should be nice...probably pretty hot...and we are going to a famous mountain (the one from the movie Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon!) to the 3 Gorges Dam and then to a big city and my student's house!) We might also be standing on a train for 14 hours to get there (the only tickets left were "no seat" tickets...) but we are going to bring small stools and if worse comes to worse we'll just lean back to back for 14 hours, hahahaha...yeah...

Here's the plan:

April 24: Take train to Xiangfen, then bus to Wudangshan (its a very famous mountain)
April 25-29: Stay in Wudangshan (the first 2 nights we will stay at Baihui Shanzhuang Hotel tel: 86-719-5689191...it is located on the mountain. The second 2 nights we aren't quite sure where we will be...maybe the same place or another one on the mountain)
April 29-30: Yichang (this is the city where the 2 Gorges Dam is located). we will stay at JunWang Hotel tel: 86-717-6344297
April 30-May4: Wuhan (this is a really big city). we will stay at WuHan Pathfinder international Youth hostel, 368# Zhong Shan Rd, Wuchang District,Wuhan, Hubei Tel: +86 27 88844092
May 4-6: We will stay at my student Ashley's home near Wuhan
May 6: we will return to qufu

If everything goes according to plan we will also be meeting Bret and Kevin on the 30th in Wuhan which should be FUN!! Hopefully we will be able to find transportation to all of the places we have scheduled to go...with the crazy holiday traffic and all...good times.
There should be good blog entries to come after this adventure, so stay tuned!! :)

Stinky Tofu experience

In the spirit of adventure...Clayton bought "stinky tofu" in the East market and in a once-in-a-lifetime experience, we ate it.
Reactions are well depicted in the following photos, but i will tell you that it wasn't soooo bad but definitely had a slight "poop" aftertaste. good times

4 crazy lǎowài and 1 zhōngguórén

well, now that we have been in China for about 8months now...we are becoming more adventurous and more "chinese"...after months of hearing and being woken up at odd hours by Firecrackers/Fireworks...we decided it was our turn to have a go. Bret bought the fireworks...he got in a cab, and the cab driver being the most AWESOME cabdriver in Qufu, took Bret to his friends Fireworks store (which had closed) and had his friend re-open so Bret could buy them. Bret decided to buy the tame ones as this was our first time. He came back with Sparklers, a few ones that explode, some that look like sparklers but shoot out, and some Firecrackers. Again, as this was our first time...we decided it wouldn't be a bad idea to have a Chinese person with us (as we're pretty sure they start setting this things off at REALLY young ages...and as Aiyi told us later he really liked to do this when he was 6) so I called up Aiyi and invited him. Aiyi was really excited (also getting to see Bret's house, as we did this at Xintan) but he had to do his laundry. So using our problem solving brains, we convinced him to bring his laundry to Brets so that he could help us set off fireworks :)

The Fireworks were a huge success. We let Aiyi light them all...as he knew what he was doing, could read the directions, and seemed to be slightly mystified why were didn't know how and why were so excited about it.

Aiyi and Kevin setting up the first ones....

At first it just did this...and we were a little disappointed

Then it did this...and we were a little scared! :) It shot them up into the air...and then started to shoot some to the side so we ran away like little children while Aiyi stood calmly watching and laughing at us.

Aiyi with a sparkler

Clayton with a sparkler

Firecrackers draped over the basketball hoop

So after setting off everything (and greatly disturbing the peace) we cleaned up everything and started to head back. But then we saw this light coming from a far distance across the soccer field. We asked Bret what it was, he said it was a car...then we noticed that it was doing sweeps...like a search light!! So Bret, Kevin, Clayton, Aiyi and I dove onto the ground behind a basketball hoop, laughing hilariously. We waited for it to cross us, then got up and BOOKED it back to Bret's laughing the entire way. It felt like we were in Prison Break! :) I think Aiyi thought we were crazy and totally hilarious. Good times in China.

YiShan with my freshmen!!

I LOVE my freshmen class, they are the best! They are always so excited about everything and so friendly and great! So last week, they invited me to join them when they climbed YiShan (Yi Mountain) near Qufu. It took about 30mintues by bus to get there, and the mountain isn't very high. But, in China mountain climbing means climbing up the stone stairs that lead you up the mountain...so that means working some serious calf muscles! But we had such a wonderful time! The weather wasn't too hot, it didn't rain...was a little hazey (but that's to be expected in China). The mountain was really interesting....it is known for its large unusual stones and caves. When we got to the top, we had to crawl through a cave to get to the very top...it was hilarious! Inside the cave area, it was really small so you had to get down and crawl, but the stone was really slipery so there was no traction with your sneakers...so basically i was pulled through by a random chinese guy ahead of me! :) It was also so much fun to spend time outside of the classroom with my favorite students, to speak about all kinds of subjects with them, and to even practice my chinese!! All in all...it was one of my favorite days in Qufu to date!!