國庆節: Part 2- Huangshan

Wednesday night, 8 of us got on a train headed toward Huangshan. The ride was a glorious 12 hours of cramped spaces and uncomfortable sitting. It was only soothed by the constant games of Big 2 and delicious tubes of peanut butter. We left at 10pm so I was able to catch sunrise from the train, because I couldn't for the life of me sleep. We had planned to climb a mountain right when we got off the train, but that wasn't a good idea because none of us had much sleep and it was to be a several hour climb. Instead we randomly got into some people's cars and they brought us to their little hotel and set us up with some rooms and a tour. It was already mid-afternoon at this point so we drove an hour to a river and got to go rafting. Rafting was immensely fun. The initial struggle for the raft itself started the fun and being dragged off by the flow of the river continued it. We stayed til dusk, when all the mosquitos came out to feast and were rightly bitten to shreds. We got back to our tiny hotel and had a rough night before knocking out. We were rudely awakened in the morning at 7 and then driven off to a mountain. We paid our admission to get into the designated mountain tour area and proceeded to walk around and take a few pictures. It was a very nice place with a river running through it. We were then carted off to another mountain/forest area. This was the place where they filmed Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (臥虎藏龍). There were many small waterfalls and pools of water amdist a forest of bamboo. A very serene place despite all the tourists. We took a great many funny photos and I bought some tiny mountain kiwis that were delicious. We then went back to the hotel and had lunch in the city around it. We had some mountain people food that consisted of some strange bamboo root and meat. We then had to cut our vacation short and hop on a bus to get back to Shanghai. The bus was at 4 30pm ish and we got back to Shanghai at around 2am. We were exhausted to say the least. In comparison, the Guilin trip was way better, but we do plan to go back to Huangshan to climb the real mountain before we leave Shanghai. Hopefully after midterms, definitely. It's been a tough couple of days afterwards for reasons I will not mention here. But I now know how blessed we all are to be healthy in mind, body, and soul. I miss everyone back home, especially my family. So drop me a line so I know who's out there! Also, a second typhoon has rolled in with strong winds and crazy rain. I had the distinct pleasure (*sarcasm*) to be able to run through pouring rain in leather flip flops and glasses. Good stuff. Anyway, bye kids.