阳朔和桂林

I've almost convinced myself to seek help for this problem that I have:  I cannot leave home without at least four books in hand.  My vacation was scheduled for seven days and I nearly brought a book for each day.  During my 24 hours of traveling to get to Guilin I began to pat myself on the back for loading myself down, no matter how cumbersome they were otherwise.  The morning before I left, my good friend ZhangXiaQing came over to tell me that she wasn't going to be able to come along because her mom was afraid she would get swine flu while traveling.  So what had at first looked like a fun all-nighter with a friend began to look more dreadful.  It started with a train ride on a hard seater from 7pm to 2am.  While I dread spending all night on a hard seat, from the very beginning this train had a different feel.  It was subdued, like China took some time off and had a glass of wine instead of it's usual crack.  The guy across from me was polite but not nosy, instantly endearing himself to me by not overwhelming me with questions or cigarette smoke.  It's like everyone had been muffled by the festivities of the National Day celebration in the morning, and had no energy left to be annoying.

Around 2am I arrived in Loudi to wait for my next train.  At first I had decided to ignore the shouting taxi drivers and hawkers who swarmed around me, pretending that I didn't speak either Chinese or English but instead risked the inevitable sales pitch to ask if one of them could take me to the McDonald's in town so that I could get a cup of coffee.  Unfortunately he said they were closed, so I hopped over a conveniently placed shrub outside the train station and settled down against a tree to read for the next 7 hours.  I thanked the shrubs for their ability to hide me from inquisitive eyes.  I think I like China better at night.  At night you can't tell that smog is shrouding the nearest buildings.  At night old people dance in the town square and don't care who's watching.  Fireworks still pop and horns still honk, but they seem somehow softer, as though blanketed by the darkness and unable to travel as far.  I laid there and listened to the tunes played by the combination of taxi horns.  Each one plays a different note and to a different rhythm that forms a living musical.  Loudi's is livelier than Yichang's.

At 6am after finishing 1 1/2 books I decided to try for Mackers again but the next taxi driver told me there wasn't one in Loudi.  I think he was lying but I resisted the urge to try all of the taxis around.  I went inside when my eyes stopped functioning, to wait the next two (I thought) hours before falling blissfully into a bed.  Waiting in the train station after being awake all night wasn't the most miserable I've ever been, but it definitely makes the top ten list.  When the sign above the train entrance repeatedly flashed messages about the newest delay I started to think I was never going to get out of Loudi, and that's when CCR seemed prophetic. 

If I only had a dollar, for every song I've sung.

And every time I've had to play while people sat there drunk.

You know, I'd catch the next train back to where I live.

Oh Lord, I'm stuck in Lodi again.

Oh Lord, I'm stuck in Lodi again.

At almost 11am I finally was allowed to elbow my way to the train where I found my bunk and lost consciousness for the next 6 hours or so.  Upon arriving in Guilin I met two other American teachers and we hopped on a bus to Yangshuo, where we eventually located our hostel...above a night club.  I had fun falling asleep to rock music but was thankful for the ability to sleep in the next morning.  Eventually we got around and headed out to the 漓江 Li River and hired a bamboo boat to float down the river, so that we could see some of the gnarly hills lend their beauty to the country.  It's easy to see why it's such a famous tourist spot.

Yangshuo has some of the best shopping I've yet seen in China, though I haven't been to the famous Silk Street or Pearl Markets in Beijing.  We were a little disgruntled at how much we had to bargain for everything though, including a simple bottle of water.  The city was so foreigner-heavy that the locals assumed we were suckers just like the rest and tried to double the price of water and food, in hopes that we wouldn't know any better.  Once you started speaking Chinese they toned it down a bit though, and through my impressive skills I managed to get lots of cheap things.  We filled our days with a lazy kayaking trip through some of the most unique scenery on earth, a mud bath and hot springs excursion in a very underwhelming cave, and getting lost on what was supposed to be a 13 mile hike to Xingpping.  We stumbled across farmers knee deep in the fields, which in my opinion was more interesting than the highly-populated trail we had been looking for, and were honored to try to chat with the locals who gave us fruit and told us we were thoroughly lost.

I'm afraid I may be losing some of my extensive reader base due to over-exuberant typing, so here is the last highlight of the trip:
We accidentally discovered a little hostel that served coffee and ended up chatting with the owner for over an hour about his life, and how he became a follower of our king.  It was one of the most encouraging conversations I've had.  All in all, it was a great week with great people.  Pictures will follow.

"If you don't get to a beautiful place every couple of years, you get to thinking everything is urban, as though when God made creation he just made some medium-sized buildings, a bowling alley, and a burger place."
-Don Miller