It's been too long I know. I haven't been writting much lately because I haven't been doing too many excting things (well out of the ordinary of Changxing-life anyways). I just had my May Holiday break last week. It was China's Laor Day, so most people in China get a week off to relax and be with their families. Most people will travel and the such for the week. However last week I spent a lot of time getting to know my home town (current home anyways).
I spent a lot of time lounging around the city's tea houses, parks, and riding my scooter all over H-E-double-hockey-sticks. I read a lot and actually got pretty tied up in a C.S. Lewis book about space and aliens other nerdy things like that. I had originally planned to head to Beijing to see the Great Wall, however it would have been extremely expensive, and I'm sure that last week the population of Beijing at least doubled. Then I thought of just hopping on a bus/train and heading South... but I would have spent just as much money going from place to place. SO I saved money, and relaxed. PLUS in just about a week... the prettiest lady that I know of will be visiting me for 2 weeks.
I guess you could say that I saved all of my energy for this highly anticipated visit from my mei nu. We will be going to Suzhou, Hangzhou, Guilin, and then Shanghai for a couple of days. Guilin is the big part of the trip. We are flying there, I bought the ticktes on the Friday of my break. Here are some pictures of Guilin! If you click on the pictures you can see more than what's initially shown. There are some beautiful small towns surrounding Gulin that I think we will stay in instead of the city. This area is supposed to be one of the 3 heavens-on-earth of China. I really can't wait.
OK so last week I took a few pictures of Changxing and the surrounding areas. The following one's made the blog-cut. I rode my scooter for about 45 minutes into the country... and it's amazing how much fresher the air is outside of the cities and how much sweeter everything smells. I'm not just saying that either... the air had a flowery and fruity smell to it; it was great.
I saw this huge outcrop of the hills while I was leaving Changxing, so I drove towards it. I had to drive down this very plush road (the trees you see are ginko trees i believe) and came upon a very small little village at the foot of this massive rock. I didn't go any further than this, but I liked this spot. Its only about 10 minutes from my school--on the scooter.
Lonesome houses in the woods... there wasn't too much around these parts. Just the sporadic cluster of a few homes every 2-3 miles or so. Very quiet and peaceful.
Some more shots of distant hills.... I would need the old 4-wheeler to reach these ones. My hog isn't too well equipped to take the hills and mud.
This is a park right around the corner from my school. I come here a lot to walk around and relax after classes. Usually I will see some of my students playing around the fountain (that you cant see), or causing other trouble that their parents wouldn't approve of.
This is where I was reading...
This is to the left of where I was reading. During the May Holiday a lot of couples will plan weddings because it's one of the few times out of the year that they have no work. This day I saw about 10 different couples in the park getting pictures taken. A few of the couples had their pictures taken on that bridge, or in front of the flowers near me. And then they'd venture my way and take pictures of the foreigner reading in the grass. THEN they'd ask me to pose with the husband or the wife or both for a picture with them. This happened like 4 times! One guy looked at me after he took pictures and says: "Mary is not for you." Then he laughed! So I was thinking about it.... cuz at first I thought he meant the bride was not for me, which i just kinda shrugged off as a joke. But then I realized that there is about an 8% chance of that Chinese bride's name being Mary. So maybe he said: "Marry is not for you." So in broken English this guy was telling me that I'm not marriage material! Maybe....I don't know what he meant. It's a mystery.... I thought it was funny though.
This is a closer shot of that bridge that I was sitting near. Green is everywhere, and this park also smells nice because of all of the trees. Ok so that was my break. It was pretty uneventful, but it was some good solid alone time. I enjoyed myself for the most part. I got to explore my city, I got a haircut, I shaved, I ate some good food, I watched a few movies (OK a lot of movies) and now I'm just anticipating the arrival of my lady. I'll keep you posted about our Guilin trip.
Batei!
No comments:
Post a Comment