Huangshan Mountains

Last weekend 15 of us went backpacking in the Huangshan Mountains. It was so incredible! The Huangshan Mountains are what inspired the movie Avatar. They are famous because there is a sea of clouds surrounding them that make it look like they are floating! We got on a train at midnight on Friday and got to Huangshan at around 8 in the morning. We headed straight to the mountains then when we got there we ate lunch and headed out to start hiking. We hiked to some waterfalls which were beautiful. My favorite part though was the sky. We could actually see the sky crystal clear for the first time since I came to China! The sky is always hazy and cloudy and even though our city is a lot less polluted than the bigger cities, we still can’t see the sky clearly. The sky in the Huangshan mountains though was like America sky. It was so blue and beautiful and I just wanted to keep looking at it because it was so beautiful. That only lasted during the day though. At night it got so foggy that we could hardly see anything we were doing.

The trail we had to take to get to where we were going to camp for the night could take anywhere from 6 to 10 hours. Since we got to that trail at around 4:30 after hiking some others we decided it would be better to take the cable cars up to the top of the mountain. I am SO glad we did this. It was so so so beautiful. We could look down on the mountain and we could see waterfalls and the trees were beautiful and it really did look like Avatar, When we got to the top of the mountain we were in a cloud until we hiked down the mountain a bit the next day. All that night though everything was wet wet wet and cold and really really foggy.

The next day we started early in the morning to hike down the mountain which involved going up up up for a long time. The trail is all stairs. So the whole day we were climbing stairs up and down up and down. My legs are still so sore from it. We were hiking in fog for a couple hours until we came to this lookout where a billion people were. We were out of the clouds and there it was, the sea of clouds that made it look like the mountains were floating! It was so beautiful and I am so glad it cleared out enough for us to see it.

The rest of the day we hiked down down down this incredible mountain. It was so beautiful and a huge highlight to my trip to China so far. We got on a train at 7 and got back to Zhenjiang at 4 in the morning where Sara and I went to Jordan and Morgan’s house to sleep for 2 hours until the busses started running to Yangzhong. We got back to our school at around 8:30 and were greeted by Rosie blowing us kisses and Orange waving from the third floor balcony. They are so sweet.

On Tuesday night Rosie invited Sara and I to go out to eat with her. It was Sara, me, Orange, Rosie, and Rosie’s adorable daughter. We went and got hot pot which is one of my very favorite things I have had here in China.  First they fry a ton of meat and vegetables and put it in a bowl in the middle of the table and you eat from that. There is a stove thing in the middle of the table that everyone sits around. So after you eat the fried stuff they take it out and they put soup in it and you put more stuff in and watch it cook. They brought in live crab and put it in the hot pot and we got to watch them cook. Poor crabs. They were really yummy though. Rosie’s daughter is in kindergarten and she is the prettiest little girl. She is so adorable. Rosie is the one who shares an office with us and she is so beautiful too. I love our friends here!

Last week Sara got her hair permed here and Kara, Julia and I went with her and got our hair washed and styled. They massaged our heads as they washed our hair and it felt so so so good. Then they curled my hair and it was beautiful! The guy that did my hair was shaking a ton. I thought he was going to burn himself he was shaking so much! Haha It was so funny. I think it was maybe the first time he had done blonde hair. Everyone’s hair turned out beautifully and Sara’s perm turned out perfect! She looks so beautiful!!!!

Yesterday I walked out to go to my class and my kids were waiting at the opposite end of the walkway from where the door is to the building my apartment is in and when they saw me they ran down the entire walkway and hugged me and walked me all the way to class. They were all trying to hold my hands and it was the cutest thing. I love my kids so much.