Local time: Fri April 12, 1:04
Finally after a fun week of traveling, immediately followed by midterms, and now laying in bed after numbing my 25 mosquito bites, I can take some time to write an extensive update of our last two weeks!
Last week was our “reading week” which is basically just our spring break.
Monday, April 1
Laxmi, Peter, and I took a train from Tangjiawan train station (15 minute DiDi/taxi from school) to Guangzhou South train station. We then took a DiDi about 2 hrs south to the Guangzhou airport where we met up with Avril and her dad ~ she had gone to Guangzhou earlier to see her family! The whole process to get through the train stations, airport security, the 2hr flight, and to our hotel was easy and efficient, way to go China. In the Guangzhou airport, we actually found a Tim Horton’s coffee! Our first night traveling, we actually stayed in Meishan, Avril’s hometown. Peter and I stayed at a hotel near Avril’s aunt’s house, where Avril and Laxmi stayed the night. Meishan is just on the outskirts of Chengdu. We didn’t do anything Monday aside from traveling, and boy it felt good to get to our hotel room – though it was an odd room, a one-of-a-kind room on the floor… with dark wood and no windows. But, it was very comfortable!
Tuesday, April 2
On Tuesday, we went to the cherry blossom garden! A lot of the flowers and cherry blossoms were past their prime, but it was a still a beautiful place and garden. We then went to lunch with Avril’s aunt, dad, and a couple other relatives… it was a family-style lunch, food was on a center spinning thing 🙂
We then took a quick train from Meishan to Leshan to see the Leshan Giant Buddha! We bought our tickets, left our luggage at a shop near the entrance, and headed into the very large park. You start at the bottom of the mountain and walk through caves and along paths with large buddha carvings and even offerings. It was incredibly scenic and spiritual. There are two parts of the park: the first part is at the bottom through the caves where you can see 30-50 meter-high Buddha, these tickets costed ¥50/student paid just as we entered the park; the second part was the Giant Buddha that you are supposed to see after as you hike up. Those tickets cost us ¥40/student, but we didn’t pay for those until we were about halfway up. Sort of a side note: we discovered that Avril’s dad is not great with directions, he just sort of walks, and Avril takes after her dad. As we followed Avril through the Giant Buddha park, we skipped the first part ENTIRELY and went straight to the Giant Buddha 😂 The Giant Buddha was amazing! A truly majestic and astonishing feat of human work. He was much bigger in person and seated nicely in the mountain facing the city across the water. When you arrive, you arrive right at the top of his head. And this is where we toured this park completely wrong.
The path you’re supposed to take is: go to the Budddha caves, then go to the Giant Buddha’s feet, then hike up to the Giant Buddha’s head, and then take the exit route back down from the head and out of the park.
The path we took: Straight to the Buddha head, then back down to the Buddha feet, then back up to the Buddha head to go back down to the exit… because the park was closing! It was quite funny and memorable, and even though we didn’t see everything or go the correct route, it was fun and we still got to see many beautiful parts. We even stood at the top of the Buddha head for about half and hour watching a worker in a very homemade looking harness stand on the cliff edge with a LONG fishing pole… we wondered what was down there?? Oh boy, we were scared he would slip and his harness that was connected to… nope, being held by a rope by another person… would not save him. Turns out it he was fishing for a scarf!
Anyways, it was a great time. We left the park, got some dinner, went to the club, and called it a night!
I have +6 mosquito bites since I started writing this blog… and I’ve killed 1 mosquito. THIS IS HORRIBLE. I recounted all of my bites as well, I actually have over 30.
Wednesday April 3
This day I was very frustrated. Because we went to the club the night before, everyone slept-in, including myself. But, we were supposed to go for a hike this day which we ended up not doing because by the time everyone was awake around noon, no one seemed interested (it would also apparently take around 6 hours to do the whole hike and riding a tram-like thing to the top of Leshan mountain). This was fine, but what frustrated me was that after we had a delicious take-out lunch in our hotel room, everyone slept the rest of the day. I did not sleep, and I was very bored. We were not in a city center or anything, a beautiful rural area in a woody, mountainy area. We made a new plan to go see Kung Fu Panda 4 that day as well, and as I waited for people to awaken so we can go out, the hours kept on passing… Around 6pm I decided to go by myself and walk around the village and area. It was a nice walk, the streets were all crowded with old-style apartment buildings and street markets. I walked up and down the roads and passed many restaurants and markets. It started to rain on me around 7pm when I was summoned back to the hotel so we could go to eat hotpot… then I waited another 20+ minutes in the hotel lobby for them to get ready to go. But aside from all the waiting and just one lazy day, it wasn’t so bad to relax and also have some time to myself to walk around and explore.
The hot pot was delicious! It was also incredibly spicy. A traditional and fun eating-style in Sichuan. After hotpot, we went around the city-center more and finally tucked-in for the night.
Thursday April 4
Finally – the day we went to the Panda Reserve!!
I mean, there’s not much else to it… we went and saw the pandas!
Friday April 5
We left Chengdu early in the morning, got lunch in Guangzhou, and then headed back to school… Since then Peter and I have been very busy with mid-terms. I especially have had 4 presentations this week that have really been taking up my time.
This week, I have been spending lots of time with friends when I get the chance: Captain Lin (my captain from Rugby), Beryl, Rain, Avril, and Alexey. I recently hit a new squat personal record of 92kg (202 lbs)! And a new deadlift personal record of 87kg (191 lbs)! The Hong Kong Rugby Sevens tournament happened over this last weekend. I’m bummed I couldn’t go this year, even though I’m so close, but hopefully I can go next year or the year after. I really have found rugby to be my favorite thing right now. I love watching it and playing it! Peter also bought my flowers last week 🙂 And my friend Beryl surprised me with a bouquet of flowers the other day, for no particular reason (I also got her a bouquet of flowers) ~ now I have flowers drying in my closet.
I’m relieved to be down with most of my major mid-term assignments, though I still have a couple individual projects to work on now. I’m glad that rugby practice is starting up again, I get to practice Tuesday-Sunday! I just hope I can stop getting bit so much by mosquitos (I wear an anti-mosquito cream and apply anti-itch every day)… it makes my body itchy and really sore/achey because they swell and stiffen. Not fun. Looking forward to the next weeks! Sorry for this late and LONG post.
再见,
Abigail & Peter
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