Hiking

One of the last weekends before the semester finished, I went hiking with some friends. There's a park that you can pay 70 yuan to get into and then hike all around inside. It's pretty neat, but 70 yuan seems a bit high. We had heard that there was a way to start in another valley, hike over the ridge of the mountains (which aren't actually that tall), and enter the park on the back side, so we decided to try it, a challenge to conquer!

A man working in the fields came over to look at our map, which was a rough outline of where we were trying to go printed from google maps

Setting out on a Saturday afternoon, we spent the night at the nongjiale, or literally happy farmer's house, so that we could get an early start the next morning. Leaving at 7:30 the next morning, we hiked along the trail, which surprisingly had more people on it than I had ever seen up there before. By the time we reached a certain fork in the road, the other people had long since stopped hiking on the trail we were on, and the trail itself was clearly not used as often. We continued on our quest, though, enjoying the adventure.

The trail when it was still existent, and there were still people on it!

The path grew smaller and smaller, as well as steeper and steeper. Close to the ridge before going down into the back of the park, the trail was steep enough that I had to hold onto trees as I went up, and just over the ridge, I felt like I was skiing on my shoes, because I just slid from tree to tree, the slope too steep for my shoes to keep any traction! This challenge was compounded by the fact that some of the trees had thorns on them, but they were hard to see before grabbing the tree. Later the wild grass hid the path and the view, since it was taller than me, so I walked along, barely following the small trail, and not able to see in front of me!

where we came from

where we are going

You can see the grass is taller than S, and he's about 7 inches taller than me!

At one point we did meet two other people attempting the same thing as us, so we stuck with them the rest of the way. As it turns out, they saved us quite a bit of time, because when we met them, they were coming back down from a little trail that we were headed up that didn't go through.

Ten hours, 18 kilometers, and a few scratches and bruises later, we made it through the park and back home! (The shower that night ranked in my life's Top 10 Showers, too!)

More Pictures

I just finished uploading more pictures from my trip onto my Picasa album...check it out here!

Summer Trip #1

Summer break arrived (finally) 16 days ago, and I spent the last 14 of them traveling in China. Included among the places I visited were...

Hangzhou, the city Marco Polo said was the finest in the world

Yangshuo, near the Li River in southern China and a very touristy town

Xitang, where the first scene of Mission Impossible 3 was filmed
Anji, the location of the filming of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon
a tea village where longjing tea, a specific type of green tea, originated and is grown
Other firsts/accomplishments include...
my longest train ride - 31 hours
most number of buses taken in 1 day - 13
longest amount of time riding a bike in 1 day - 5
funniest taxi ride - The driver was so proud of his English...he said "alright" instead of "okay," and "thank you very much," instead of just "thank you." After saying his English phrases, he started laughing hysterically, then would say another English phrase and start laughing again! I laughed so hard I cried.
learning how to play euchre
eating horse meat...for breakfast
sleeping on a bamboo mat

Here are some other random pictures...
It was incredibly beautiful scenery, and great to travel and see more of China. My favorites were riding the bike through the countryside and observing people's lives out there, hiking near the tea village and seeing bamboo for the first time, and seeing bright blue sky.

Hope you enjoyed the pictures!

Change versus routine

I did a values exercise a few weeks ago, and discovered one of my highest values is structure, while another is change and variety. That was sort of confusing for me, since it seems that those are opposite. I'm finding that it's true, though...I can see those values playing out in my language learning.

For example, I've been in language class since the end of February - 4 1/2 months. I know I learn Chinese best when I have the structure of class to compliment outside learning. When I have some sort of scaffolding, or compartment, to put new words or grammar, I'm able to remember them better. When the structure isn't there, it's a lot harder for me to learn new things in daily life and remember those things. But at the same time, I'm so ready for a break from class! I get super restless sitting in the same room for 3 hours a day, going through a textbook. Summer is here! Why am I still in class? Vacation and travel awaits around the corner, and it seems like it can't come fast enough!

I get organized and create a learning schedule and work on little projects that help me learn Chinese and love that. I get in this rhythm and I'm learning new grammar and reviewing old vocab and reading characters and nobody can stop me...for a while. Then all of a sudden, I reach this point where that drives me crazy, and I scrap it and don't study, I just talk with my tutor instead of doing what I prepared for us to work on together, and have to work really hard to convince myself to go to class.

It's probably a really good thing I studied education in college so someday when I decide to grow up and get a job, it's not a 9-5 desk job doing the same thing day in and day out. I still plan on having summer break for a while, and I hope to make good use of the change in routine!

This is the last week of class (can you tell!?!), and the summer will go by really fast, I'm sure. But I wouldn't be surprised if, when Sept 1 rolls around, I'm ready, or almost ready to get back into the routine of having class again!