Bare with me this one is long.

So last weekend in China we started with school on Saturday, Saturday night took an overnight train to Da Li and went to too many places, it was kind of ridiculous, it was like the tour guide was in a competition with other tour guides to see how many different places they could fit in one day.So we started by arriving in Da Li at 6 am and waited outside a restaurant for a half hour till it opened. Ha. Da Li itself is gorgeous, the buildings are beautiful then scenery is beautiful there is water on one side(giant lake) and mountains on the other… felt like home. Almost. Anyways, the first place we went to was actually really cool, its called Chonsheng temple and it has the three pagodas. Here we are at the entrance to it.

The three pagodas from a distance

We took a little electric tour car up to the main temple and inside one of the adjacent buildings were these 6 meter tall statutes of four Buddhist monks, there is way more meaning than that, I feel uncomfortable for the degree I am understating the sacredness.

We toured a couple more temple buildings then went to the foot of the pagodas

After that we hurried to the bus and took a 20 minute drive to a shopping area and spent 15 minutes there then hurried to a boat dock(station) where we waited for half hour to board a boat. Hurry up and wait theme, I may or may not have thought of Mom at this point. Anyways I don’t have any great photos to show of the 3 and a half hour boat ride around a giant lake. It was just that, there were a couple islands we went to but altogether it wasn’t a highlight. Then we went to butterfly sanctuary place, where it has a superclear pool of water and the lake of lovers

I feel like we went to another place after that but I forgot. The finale of this day starting at 530 AM was the 4 hour bus ride through developing farmland and dirt roads with no suspension. Sounds terrible,the ride was. But the scenery was absolutely beautiful. Rice paddies, fields ofcrops, mountains, and construction. The amount of development that is going onin China right now is incomprehensible, we drove through what I thought was themiddle of nowhere then all of the sudden I see a giant Airport already builtand an 4 lane each way highway being built. This entire time I’ve been in ChinaI don’t think ive once had a view where construction wasn’t taking place. Wethen arrive in Li Jiang, and go to sleep .next day…



The next day we went to the Naxi ethnic group center and saw a huge performance, the show included over 200 actors, it was huge, and the stage was outdoors so we received rain ponchos to keep from getting wet, It rained like a Washington mid-winter day…unrelenting.

We went up a gondola to see snow mountain but it was to foggy,there was a bit of a break.. this is not snow mountain

After that we went to a ethnic village where there was a silk embroidery school. They make pictures one silk thread at a time, my camera won’t do these any justice.

They were unreal, there were even pieces where it was one picture on one side and then another picture on the other.

Sorry for the long post, this weekend was jammed packed.Right now though I am getting to go to sleep before my last day of full classes, it has gone by so fast, Classes have been stressful and challenging, but I have become so much more proficient in Chinese. I am so, so grateful that I was able to take advantage of this opportunity, and would like to thank my family for helping make this happen.

So all I have left to do is a day of classes, take a final,fly to Beijing and spend a day/ night there with 2 other classmates and no teacher...then find my way back to the airport, then get on a plane and boom!Back in Washington. I have an amazing collection of sign pictures. I leave you with this one.

So last weekend I went to the Yunnan Nationalities Village, it’s a huge park with the 25 different ethnic group represented in Yunnan. In China there are 56 different ethnic groups, and in Yunnan Province there are a major presence of those 25 ethnic groups. It was super interesting, Each Ethnic group village had the traditional buildings and each room was set up like “back in the day” So let us enter the first village

They had this huge layout that was circular, I don’t really know how to describe it but on the outer ring the 12 symbolic animals were placed, then the next level where 6 spheres that were black and white, (yin and yang) and the centerpiece was a totem with all the animals on it. Somebody almost photobombed this picture, but hey weren’t very successful

Photobombing = someone trying to jump into your picture at the last moment to be in it. We have had wars with this.

The next ethnic village we went to was the Zhaung ethnic group, this is a picture of one of their traditional rooms. Pretty cool.

Here is photo of a building set up. This is the building of the Muslim ethnic group in China, The Hui ethnic group.

Sorry don’t have much to say about this place, it was really really cool but, a week ago so I forget some details. Fun thing though, We had a minder following us the entire day,i feel this is the first government official following us that we noticed. Who's to know if they have been doing that with all the tourist places we have been to. Anyways tonight I’m taking an overnight train to Da li to take part in Mid-Autumn Festival, back to this train thing though…. 8 hours we leave at 11 and I haven’t slept on public transportation since I was 12. Hope I can sleep.

It took me awhile to slide my fat ass into this giant windpipe thing.

7 days till i am back in the US.

Sorry I haven’t posted in a while, I have had so much homework. Currently my day is class from 8 – 1130 then lunch/do hw then from 2-515 class then do homework till about 9 then study the next chapter till I passout. Learning a lot though, and quickly. My vocab expands about 40 words a day and speaking is becoming easier but damn they talk fast sometimes, can’t quite pick it all up. So Kunming the city is super beautiful and clean. It has a population of 6.5 million. My friend and I explored a shopping mall area as we tried to find the secret market our Chinese professor told him about. Buses in China are awesome. We found it but it was closed so we came back the next day. Don’t really have good photos of it though. So let’s move on to my room. A step up overall from Beijing we have mattresses this timeand there is a separation of shower and toilet. Fun thing we get to do is handwash our laundry because to do it is super expensive, here it is drying.

There was a huge thunderstorm the other night and lightening was hitting only a couple miles away on buildings, it was super cool to watch the light hit and then the thunder rattle the building. We found out we have a leak in our window so things got a little drastic.

There is a park right next to campus that is a huge lake with some islands in it and I walked around and interviewed Chinese people forhomework. Ha.

Also great thing is late night street food, everyone says they have stomach problems but I haven’t gotten any and I think it might be from the amount of spicy foods ive been eating or my stomach is a champion.

It is 1 kuai per stick and its like 6.3 kuai to a dollar… do the math… soooo good. Everything else is going good last weekend we went to the nationalities village so ill try and post pictures about that it was super cool.