Guilin, China

Hi everyone~
Just got back last night at around7pm from Guilin China-clearly an amazing place in the world to see! But, we were on a mission of speed and agility and did not have one moment to write from there...being our trip got cut almost in half, they attempted to squeeze as much in as possible and still let us sleep for 6 hours a night! So, needless to say, when I rolled over at 0830 this morning, I did not leap out of bed! Heading out to experience Hong Kong for the day and we leave tonight at 11pm. Just got word that the seas will be VERY rough tonight as we head out, so will probably not write again tonight!
So Guilin...we arrived there late in the evening about 2330pm, enough time to have dinner and check into our rooms. We were up the next morning @ 0600 to begin our day down the Li River...which was definitely the highlight of the trip. Of course my picture of what this was going to look like were these small river boats running on a single engine and just with our group of 30...then reality of commercialism hit when we hit the shore and found hundreds of others thinking the same thing..they "herded" us on large houseboats, settled into a bottom level with seats in groups of 8 and headed down the river. Now, with that said, within minutes we realized that each group was pretty much on one of 3 levels and the remaineder of trip was fabulous, after a few laughs about our imaginations!
then these mountains...they were everywhere! One of the sad lessons though is that China is just beginning to discover is that using coal and driving excess amounts of cars is creating a level of pollution that is taking over many of the bigger cities...so when you look at these pictures, the haze is smog, not overcast skies...again, taking that out of the equation, these mountains close up are just astounding! We cruised down the river until about 1:30pm, having had lunch on the ship, which was a typical Chinese meal for just about every meal we had there. I included some pictures from postcards so you can also see the "natural beauty" without the smog~i even did a night one so you know I am not messing with ya...at least I am telling you I did not cheat because the difference is amazing... and then, as we are headed down the river, we see a bunch of guys on these bamboo rafts that at first seem like they are just hanging out. As they get closer to boat, it looks like they are going to run into the boat by accident and oh no, we are going to hit them...but NO. they pull up alongside of us and whala, instant chatke shopping opportunity...the most hilarious part was seeing one of these guys screaming on his cell phone to his distributor about getting more goods! (just made that part up-I must say, consumerism is working in all corners of the earth!) And then there is Judy-we got to be on this trip together and I just love this woman-her story telling capabilities are magical-she's trying to teach me, but I think it is a lost artform! We had fun together on this trip and I am sure there will be many more in the years to come~a kick in the pants!
The day went on then to climb one of these mountain peaks-but at 95 degrees, many of us decided to stay back after hearing it was 950 steps-although I had been doing my 8-10,000 steps, these ones were straight up-no one came back without their legs vibrating and sweating at 20! Not that I could not keep up with the best of them, it was a choice to stay back with the other half and hang out and have a beer in the shade! And finally the day was topped off by seeing the 2500 year old banyon tree-
I have never seen anything as big other than the heighth of a sequoia! Dinner then and a couple of students and I decided to venture out into the city square area to walk around-it was Friday night and everyone was out on the town-families, teens and the whole city it seemed. There were street vendors that were selling chatskis and of course, we were the only 3 blondes in the whole area~we went to bed then only to have a morning wake up call at 0600 to get up to do ti chi with a master teacher...well obviously beginners, we learned the first part of the ever so complicated and long series...I plan to take the class taught on board though by a faculty members wife when we start having days at sea again! Here we are in our carefully constructed poses... The day was then spent going to a silk factory to see how silk is made, a Art University where we were taught how to use ink and brushes to do chinese character writing as well as a zoo where the giant panda was located~the zoo was the least favorite as the panda looked somewhat drugged up sitting in his little corner zoning-BUT, the gift was meeting this elder and helping her smash aluminum cans-surely a highlight to connect with an elder for me!AND there's more, but I gotta start prepping for the on-ship time festivities of announcements and more annoucements! As I said, the ship will be rockin and rollin tonight and I have never been sea sick nor taken any drugs...but everyone is saying that if we want any sleep tonight to do so...so, we will see~will let you know tomorrow what the verdict was...and stay tuned for info on the caves, pics from the silk factory and my day in Hong Kong!!!
love for now~
ro
p.s. mom, I bought a Marjan set today-so you're gonna have to start teaching me to play!