Yellow Dragon Cave and The Grand Canyon of China

The first day we got off the train and checked into the Hostel and headed out to see what we could  see we went to the Yellow Dragon Caves and too the Grand Canyon of China.  Both were beautiful.

Amazing!

Superman

It's a fish

The caves were really neat and nicely lit so we could see them.  We got to go on a boat ride through the caves and walk through the second little cave too.


The Grand Canyon of China was also amazing...It had two big waterfalls, lots of views...beautiful water...the most nature I have seen in China.

Train ride and fun times

The trip was truly a unique awesome experience.  I heard it was hard to travel during the new year holiday but we decided to do it anyway.  We had train tickets to get to Zhangjiajie, but not to get home and we intended on getting them in Wuhan and then exploring Wuhan but that plan failed and we ended up spending most of the time in Wuhan trying going to the airport to get plane tickets so we could get home.  We finally got the tickets and decided just to stay at the station and wait for the train which left at 12.  Here is some pictures from that journey!  

We love waiting!

Over it!

Not happy about waiting

My bed on the train..third level!

The view from the train

View

More of the way in to town on the train '

Another view of the second and third top bunks

Chinese New Year

The vacation began with my friend Ben coming to Nanjing where we caught a train the next day together.  He arrived on Chinese New Years Eve.  We decided that we would try to find a tomb in the mountain here that is famous and ended up climbing to mountains instead.  It was a lot of fun but a  bad choice because we were going to be climbing for three days after that.  Here are some pictures from Chinese New Years Eve and climbing the mountain. Fun times!!!

 Dead from the mountain climbing!

 Fireworks were everywhere so awesome!!!! Love Chinese New Years!

 Matt and Megan!! Hot Pot on New Years Eve!

 Brains!!! YES WE TRIED IT

 So much food!

Dog in bar!! Dressed and ready to go out!

Hot Pot

I just got a new class from a my manager who is moving up so he is getting rid of his classes.  He has really friendly parents and they love to practice English.  They wanted to take us out to Dinner and so we agreed to go with them.  Me speaking no Chinese and Chinese being really interesting eaters while me preferring to eat like a five year old, I knew I was in for an adventure.

We got to dinner...a really nice Hot Pot place.  Hot Pot is a type of eating where they give you a pot of broth      divided into two sides spicy and not spicy.  You order food and it all goes into the pot at the same time and cooks and then you fish it out as it cooks.  So there we were with a few different families and they order the most interesting things squid tentacles, duck tongue, sea food sea food and more sea food.  I don't like sea food so it was an adventure tasting new things.  There was also a guy making noodles fresh for people. Noodle making is really neat and it is like a rope of noodles the guy was whirling the noodles all around our heads and his it was like ribbon dancing very awesome.  

During dinner Chinese drink a lot and they do a lot of cheer sing with little glasses of beer and when they cheers you you have to drink the whole cup at once.  Needless to say most Chinese guys don't walk out of dinner sober.  Thankfully for us they slowed down on the cheers and we all made it through dinner :)  

After Dinner they wanted to go to KTV...Private Kareokee.   Which is another adventure...when we go with   westerners it is usually a wild time of crazy singing and dancing.  When Chinese people go it is a serious thing they love to sing and show off their singing...and they can sing.  For us we can't sing so when they were wanting us to sing it was really embarrassing.  They also play a fun dice drinking game which was fun to learn with them.

The night was a success and adventure all in one!