Xi'an and one hell of a mountain

So, I've been traipsing all over China for two weeks, and haven't had a chance to tell you about it!


I'm going to try to remember it all and get it all in with out writing a whole novel in the process. =)


After spending a week in Hangzhou, I traveled with my friend, the amazing Hannah R. and our Chinese friend Summer to Xi'an. We took an overnight train leaving at 4 and arriving and 9am.... It was a good trip and I slept like a rock. Once we arrived in Xi'an, our first stop was the Terracotta Warriors! One quick bus ride out there and we were in business. It was real hot, but because we traveled to northern China overnight the humidity was low and I appreciated that!


The Warriors were pretty awesome. It was spectacular to see the reconstructed statues, but also really sad. This emperor, this ruler in ancient China was so afraid of death and what would happen to him once he could no longer control his life that he built this huge collection of 'things' that would be with him in death. These things that are still on earth, that have crumbled into pieces and are barely recognizable anymore.... (sigh...)


But the idea of these ruins being older than Jesus was pretty cool. And the area is an ongoing archeological dig... which meant that the crumbled warriors are still being excavated and reassembled. So awesome!


After seeing the warriors we headed into town, stopped at Starbucks, and then hit up Muslim street. A famous food street that has all the local favorites, and specialties of Xi'an. We had mutton soup, and homemade yogurt. All delicious. Then, we headed back to the train to go out to Huashan mountain.


We got some sleep, and then the next morning we hit the mountain!! Our hike started at 5am and boy.... did it start. The trail started off as all uphill path ways that made my calf muscles scream. But that wasn't the worst part of it.... Once the uphill finished, the stairs began. All vertical, super steep stairs that never ended.... Once the steps started, so did the chains. The paths had chain railings, and on the steep vertical stairs they were necessary for clambering up the 'steps'. It was really quite like rock climbing. And the names of these places wasn't much better... There was the 1000 foot gorge. Where all you could see walking thru it was a sliver of sky above. And then there was the sky ladder. A shorter climb but vertical like a ladder and sky above. I could tell I was alive the whole way up because my muscles were shouting their opposition to what I was putting them through, and my heart was pounding both in my chest and in my ears. I will never climb it again, but I am so glad I did for a few reasons. First, the view from the top!! Oh.... the wonders and majesty that is G0d's creation took my breath away. The peaks that floated in the sky and stretched for ever and were layered like a bunched up sheet across the land. Second, the experience at the top called "Plank Road in the Sky". There are no words to describe how terrified, excited, stoked, 'bahhhh' I was to do this. Let me paint you a picture.... Harness around your upper body. Both arms strapped in and clipped in the front. Then you have two carabineers on straps leading from those chest clips that you use to connect to the side of the mountain. Imagine walking a dog, but you are the dog. Then, you climb down a stone/ metal bar latter to a wooden plank bolted to the side of the mountain where there is pure rock on one side and nothing but airspace on the other. 6000 plus meters of drop under 12 inches of wood. It was breath catching, nerve wracking, heart racing, eye opening and any other awe emotion you can think of. Hannah said at one point 'I can't open my eyes wide enough!' And that's really the only way to describe it. There was so much nature to take in... And no way to really capture it except in person. My memory holds that beauty now....and that is enough.  I was a dare devil as per the norm, and clipped myself to a bolt and then leaned back to hang off this wall, and I sat down on the wood plank to feel nothing but air beneath my soles.... to understand the grandeur that is a mountain. I could use a whole book worth of adjectives and metaphors to describe this experience, but nothing would suffice. So I'll leave it here.


We had to hike to a neighboring peak and then took a cable car down to the bottom. Bus back to the hostel, grabbed our bags and headed back to Xi'an, and caught an overnight train to Beijing. I was in Xi'an area for a total of 1.5 days. It was a whirl wind tour for sure, but I enjoyed. (once I stopped wheezing from the mountain climbing)


Until next time.

Adventures in the H Zeeee

So I'm spending a week in Hangzhou helping my 'cousins' with an English camp. And while I've been here, there have been some awesome adventures in the last few days. I'll run them down for ya....

- Visiting the beautiful West Lake in Hangzhou. Its considered the most beautiful place in all of China.
- A quick visit to Shaoxing to get my passport and see town with a visiting friend. It was a whirl wind, but a good time.
- Getting a foot massage where I soaked my feet in tea while they rubbed my shoulders, and they got all the dead skin off my feet, and it was most wonderful.
- Rock climbing!! We bussed/hiked up a mountain, and climbed through the bushes to a rock face where we climbed. It was awesome! And yes, it was actual rock climbing with harness, rope, belayer and real rocks with no set route. I got stuck for a few minutes at the half way point as I figured out how to hoist myself over a little ridge and keep climbing. The view from the top was so worth the climb and the sore arms that came a day later. haha.

The view from the top!

The view straight down... you can barely see my belayer.
(he's wearing a blue helmet at the very bottom between the trees)

- Swimming in the Bamboo river. Its a place near here that is in a botanical garden. We swam near a small waterfall and it was warm and basically fantastic. I love to swim and haven't gone since Thailand. I didn't catch anything from the water... so don't worry.

- Visited the tea fields near here. I'd been there before, but it was cool to see again. 

- Whew! Are you tired? Because I am.... Haha. 

- OHH, and I almost forgot we explored a cave! I got dive bombed by a bat. And got a little muddy. But the weirdest part was that as we stood at the exit the air coming out of the cave was so cool that we could see our breath. The temperature difference between in and out of the cave was at least 20 degrees. Crazy!!

The schedule for the next few days includes KTV (karaoke), helping people move apartments, biking and taking selfies around Hangzhou, training up to Xi'an to see the terra-cotta warriors, and climb Mount Huashan (google 'mount huashan southern peak'.... just do it), then training over to Beijing, and flying home. AHHH!! It's getting so close. And I've still not convinced myself that I won't be returning to Shaoxing after my adventures. 

Until next time. 

Home

Home: 
     - A house, apartment, or other shelter that is the usual residence of a person or family
     - the place in which one's domestic affections are centered
     - a dwelling place or retreat of an animal
     - the place/region where something is native or most common

Synonyms: abode, dwelling, habitation

- Home is where the heart is
- Home is where your rump rests - Pumbaa  
- Home is where you go and they have to let you in
- Home is where the laundry is free
- Home is a safe place where we can go as we are and we won't be questioned -Maya Angelou
- Home is where the Wi-Fi connects automatically


I was writing this post in my head today as I rode my bike around town. I thought I had used the title before, and didn't want a duplicate. But upon inspection, I realized I hadn't written a post all about home. And, as you can see, the term 'home' has a history. It's definition is subjective to the person using it. It's been used in famous quotes. It's a part of multiple everyday idioms. There are songs dedicated to home, going home, and finding home. It's the 162nd most commonly used word in the English language. (No, I didn't know that... I just looked it up) 

There are two reasons for my fixation on the word 'home.' First, I'll be leaving my home this weekend and setting out for another home, and second, my roommate Laura left the apartment today, and she leaves China tomorrow morning. Let's approach these one at a time..... 

First, my departure. The concept of leaving Shaoxing for two and a half months is weird. I'm leaving a large pile of my belongings here because I know I'll be back, but the time between then and now seems unreal. I'm leaving for Hangzhou and I'll be there for a week, and then traveling to Xi'an province before going to Beijing. And then I'll be coming back to Shaoxing right? Like all of my other travels I'll be coming home right? Well... yes, but I'll be going to my home in America. The term 'home' becomes ambiguous and frankly, confusing when used so often. According to the Merriam-Webster definition, my usual residence is Shaoxing.... Or at least it has been for the last nine months. But, my native home is the bright yellow room in northern Wisconsin. The place that is most common for me is Shaoxing, but the place where my family dwells is Wisconsin. Do you see my conundrum? I'm not saying I have to decide on one or the other because I'm a firm believer that 'home' is the ground under my feet. I can make my home anywhere.... But rather, my point is this: Going Home is a concept that is so foreign to me. During my college years, that meant going back to WI. For nine months, going home meant my six floor walk up in Shaoxing. The idea of actually going back to my bed, to the house I share with my parents and sisters hasn't been an option for so long that it doesn't seem real. I think I'm trying to vocalize an emotion and I'm not sure how I'm doing..... The only thing I can compare it to is the idea of Spring in January. You know it exists. You know its coming. But it's been so long you're leery, and you're content with the snow. 

The second thought is all about Laura. For the last couple years of college, and now the last year in China, Laura and I have spent a large majority of our time together. And we lived together for nine months. Now she is going home, finding an apartment, buying a car, and finishing up details for her wedding. She's diving into domestic life. Its awesome, and I'm excited for her, but I realized something. Our friendship is going to change now. We will never again be roommates. We won't see each other everyday. I will see her in July for her wedding, and possibly next school year if she visits China... But who knows where life will lead us after that. I know that we will still be friends, and that we'll strive to see each other...But our friendship will be different. Not worse, just different. It's like when you graduate from high school or college. Move to a new city or gain a new sibling. Things won't ever be as they were prior to the event. I guess I'm having a nostalgia moment because I had so much fun this year. There will never be another in my life like Laura. 

Life will never be the exact same.... and a large part of me knows that its supposed to be this way. I'm excited for the unknown, for what's coming, for new adventures. I'm nervous that when I go home to America everyone and everything will be different. Either the place or the people will have changed, or I will have changed and feel differently about things. And then I'll be coming back to China.... I guess the only way to find out is to just keep moving... One foot in front of the other, finding my way home.... I'll see you soon!

Until next time. 

Annual Dragonboat camping; Year 1

HI! How are you?

This past weekend was Dragon Boat festival. I don't know what they celebrate... I didn't see any dragons. But I saw a few boats. BECAUSE... I was camping on the beach. Yes. Beach.

So here's the sitch.... Tony, Seth, Marie and myself planned a little jaunt to Zhoushan. Which is East and South of Shaoxing. But, you're thinking to yourself, isn't Shaoxing on the east coast of China? Well, yes... but not actually on the ocean. I'm getting ahead of myself... Let me start again.

(insert thoughtful moment)

Okay, Tony, Seth, Marie and I left for Zhoushan on Saturday. It was a three hour bus ride from Shaoxing. We stopped in town, and grabbed a taxi to the beach. It was overcast, and misting on and off, but not awful. The air was still pretty warm, but the wind picked up quite a bit as we hit the shore. After a moments debate, we set off down the beach toward a spot for our tents. In a jiffy we had our small little tents pitched, and were searching the beach for fire wood. I've camped a ton in my short life. I've even 'roughed it' a few times... but this was different. We built a fire, and had a cozy little time the first night. It rained as we slept, and Sunday was quite wet. We headed into town to see what we could see, and in search of coffee. We wanted to find a coffee shop to sit down in and spend a few hours because the beach had an entrance fee until 5pm... And we weren't gonna pay. However, our search of the very small town proved futile. Finally, we noticed some chairs and a table in the lobby of a hotel. We entered and explored a little, and our wanderings led us to a multipurpose room that was basically abandoned with a few desks and four chairs. Luckily, that was the number of people we had... so we decided to camp out for a bit until the rain quit or we could go back to our tents. We played cards for an hour or two and then were getting antsy.... Until we noticed a ping pong table behind a pillar. YES! We set it up (it was in two pieces) and discovered that there was only one paddle. HUGE LET DOWN!! But, wait, what was that odd shaped thing next to the table?? A ping pong ball shooter?? AND WE'RE BACK UP!!! So, we poured the bucket of ping pong balls into the machine and lined it up and began to play one at a time. But as happens with mid twenty year olds.... it soon turned into a war of 'person with paddle' vs 'everyone else'. The shooter would shoot a ball, and the paddle person would try to hit one of us with the ball, as we would dodge, and then throw back..... Needless to say, there were around 100 ping pong balls laying around the room at the end of each session... Which we promptly picked up and began the whole thing over again. =D! It was a lot of fun.

After the hotel got old, we left and headed back to the beach. The rain had quit for the time being, and we were curious if our tents had suffered from it. Upon our return we discovered everything intact except for Maries sleeping bag had gotten really wet. Like wringing wet. Which was unfortunate, but luckily my sleeping bag unzipped completely and we could share it. We wanted a fire on Sunday night too, but wood was wet, and conditions weren't exactly favorable. There was intense wind.... We had picked up a large stack of newspapers from the hotel, and had some toilet paper to help us get things started. After nearly two hours of barely lit newspaper, almost lit twigs, and building a rock retaining wall to block the wind, we got it! And had a nice little fire going for a few hours before the rain set in again, and we called it a night.

Miraculously, Monday morning dawned clear, sunny, and warm! We woke, and decided the ocean needed to be tested. So around 7am we hit the waves. And they hit back! The water was cold, and the waves were sizable. Surfing could have happened, but we settled for body surfing. Which is not as easy as one would think... I definitely went ass over tea kettle a couple times, and eventually was able to ride a wave or two. It was a ton of fun!

We packed our 'dong-she' (stuff) and headed out around 10am to catch the bus back to town and our bus to Ningbo, and then our train to Shaoxing. It was a short weekend, but so much fun. Despite the rain, we had some laughs, some good conversation, and some awesome camping. I had forgotten how much I love camping. After we returned to town, we set up the tents to brush any extra sand out of them and laid out damp sleeping bags. As we finished repacking the tents, Tony and I decided that camping over Dragon Boat festival is gonna be an annual thing. Next year, same time, different place.

Until next time.

New adventures and Woman's Weekend

Okay... So again, leave it to my Gram to remind me when I haven't posted in a while. I'm still here! And like many of you, end of the year chaotics have kicked in. So... hang on to your diapies babies, here we go.

1. Call Day: The Shaoxing-ren (ren=people) traveled to Hangzhou for the call day service that follows graduation at MLC. I have a few close friends who graduated and got called to teach in various parts of the country. My roommate here in China was one of them! Because of the time difference, and we watched live, the service was at 330am local time and we had a bit of a party and stayed up all night to watch. It was crazy, awesome, and boy! did it throw off my schedule.

2. Guitar. I bought a guitar! I was learning to play using a friends guitar but that was only once a week when I was in the same locale as the guitar. I decided I wanted to make a serious go of the guitar and so I bought one. It's got black edges that fade to red and the body is mostly red. I can play three chords and I can switch between them about as well as a toddler stacks blocks. I think I'm doing pretty well and then I get stuck and have to realign my fingers, and double check placements. But I'm determined to be able to play campfire songs. Haha.

3. Tattoo. If you perused the pictures above you may have noticed a picture of my ankle. I got a tattoo in China! It's my third one, and don't worry the place I went to was very clean and professional. And no... they didn't use an old fashioned ink skewer and mallet. (one of my friends asked about that) The new ink consists of three Chinese characters that read (phonetically) loo-shing-ch-ya, which is my Chinese names and means 'traveler.'

4. Women's Weekend: This last weekend we had a large women's weekend with girls from Shaoxing, Hangzhou and Shanghai gathering at Zion for some personal growth, dancing, crafts, and food. We had a turn out of about 20 girls and it was a blast! We watched a movie one night, went out to a nice restaurant another night.... All the girls got dressed up! We made paper crafts, and learned to make eggs salad and deviled eggs and potato salad. It was a real refresher for the soul.

Are ya still with me??

On top of all that, now the school year is wrapping up, and I'm thinking about packing and leaving my humble abode for a while. I still have those moments where I pause and think "How did I get here? I'm LIVING in China!" And there are other moments where it seems like just yesterday I was losing my mind trying to figure out how to function in this strange place. Now, I'm qualified to show other people around. Crazy!!

I'll be home soon, and I can't wait to hug my Mom and Gram... tackle my little sisters... And most importantly-- Eat a whole bag of cheese curds.

Until next time.

(You can stop wondering, Gram.... Here's your update!)

Just another day...

Saturday.

I was able to spend today doing very little, but also doing a lot. I was doing little things. And those little things were relaxing. I did some drawing, some cleaning, I shaved my legs (biggie), I went for a walk with my friend Marie, and took some graduation pictures with her. I'm about to make dinner, and then maybe watch a movie. This didn't happen today, but I started a book Thursday and finished it Friday. That felt pretty good. It was a short easy read and I enjoyed it.

Some other things that happened this week.... I got my hair trimmed. I bought some fruit that was real tasty...apples, peaches, cherries, bananas... yup. I saw a guy that had his hair in the shape of a heart on the top of his head, and dyed red too. Like a crew cut, but a red heart.... weird.

I saw a group of street food vendors argue about 'their' spots on the road. I didn't have to teach on Friday because they had a parents demonstration day. I wore a cute outfit Friday. It didn't rain on me either.... bonus!

I got an email from the guy who write 'The Daily Positive' blog. He commented/responded to a comment I made on one of his posts and it made my day.

Did some more planning for my Mount Huashan trip in June. I'm super duper ecstatic excited for it.

I was just gonna update you and I thought I had more to say... Guess not.

Well... Have a great day! Smile. Because you can.

Until next time.

T. S. F. !!!!!!

Hang on to your hair, this one is gonna fly...

This last weekend the gang known as FoC (Friends of China) gathered together in Shaoxing for the fourth annual Tent Sleeping Festival. Also, TSF. It's a fun renaming of the Chinese holiday known as Tomb-Sweeping Festival. Now, wait... Didn't we have that holiday already?? You are correct. I wrote about my adventures in Hangzhou for Tomb Sweeping a couple weeks ago. The holiday fluctuates based on the lunar calendar, so this year we decided to celebrate TSF over the Chinese May Holiday...comparable to USA's Labor Day.

Anywhoooooo, now that you've got the basics, here we go.... One person arrived Monday, five or so more Wednesday, and then in droves on Thursday with a few more Friday and one more Saturday. The total number of people sleeping in our small little three floor apartment hit about 50. Imagine every bed, couch, and most of the floors sprawled with people. Okay, so not all of the floor. But there were two good size balconies and all of third floor that was designated sleeping space. As well as a few brave souls that slept on the roof one or two nights. I slept up there one night and it was fun.

The weather cooperated so we had 80s all three days. And the only thing to do when it's that gorgeous is to get your butt outside! And that we did. Friday afternoon, and Saturday morning were filled with Ultimate Frisbee and sunshine. I'm sore to prove it, and I love it. I love Ultimate so much, and being able to play twice was just awesome.

Each of the three cities in Zhejiang province took a meal. Hangzhou had Friday breakfast, Shaoxing on Friday dinner, and Shanghai on Saturday breakfast. All of it was good. We made shredded chicken over rice with corn, carrots, and mashed potatoes. All simple enough to make.... until you remember that we had about 50 people to feed. =O I know.. Crazy! But we did it and it went over real well.

Some other awesome things that happened over the weekend was the chance for the men and women to have devotional breakout sessions, and one giant worsh!p service. We played some games; cribbage, 7 wonders, fairy tale, animal game, and settlers. We watched a movie one morning while every one was slowly gaining consciousness. There was KTV (extreme karaoke) and exploring main town Shaoxing. (Everyone stayed at Zion about 40 minutes from downtown.)

OH! I almost forgot... how could I forget... Good grief. We had an awards ceremony! Yes, that's right the official Tent Sleeping Festival Tenties. Our coordinator Nate comes up with the Tentie awards, and we all got a certificate, and a chinese coin necklace as our Tentie. Some of the fun ones were Marathoner of the Year, Biggest Smile of the Year, Accident Prone of the Year, Fungus of the Year (referring to a cat), Skype endurance of the Year (for a girlfriend of FoC member visiting from America), and a whole bunch of others that apply to our group. I was awarded 'Selfie of the Year' .... Never saw it coming right??? Ha. It was a ton of fun.

All in all it was just an awesome, spectacular, wonderful weekend. Much needed for myself, and great to see everyone. It really boosted the spirit, and invigorated the soul. Plus, it starts the beginning of a very busy two months. The next month of weekends are booked solid, and then I go on my last three weeks of adventuring before coming to the States to adventure for a bit. =)

Until next time.