Family and Friends,
I profusely apologize for my terrible communication skills this semester! I am not sure where my time has gone this year, but gone it has. First term is nearly over and I have completly neglected my friendly updating blog posts. I am merely going to gloss over the exciting highlights of term one here at Maple Leaf, and then proceed on the exciting part - fall vacation. First term was a mess of changing class lists, and settling into a new apartment, with weekends of sushi dinners and market shopping. It was a lovely term, it was a hectic term, it is a nearly finished term.
The first week of October is the National Holiday here in the PRC. That means we get a week off to go explore this wonderful country of ours. It is the week with the highest amount of travellers of the entire year, so it is a bit of a nightmare to get train tickets, plane tickets and hotels booked - but I am unwilling to miss a chance to travel (that is why I am here, after all). I chose to go to the province of Gansu, which is in central China and is host to a variety of different climates and cultures.
The famous waterwheel. It was actually rather impressive!
On Friday evening, Sara, Chris, Karl, Val and I all piled into a train compartment for an overnight ride to Beijing. The train was packed so it was pretty difficult to barter for beds in the same compartment. We ended up sharing with a grouchy old lady, who was none too thrilled to be jammed in a stall with five Canadians excited to begin their week off. She assumed we could all speak fluent Chinese, and jammered away at us. Our interpretations resulted in this understanding: she thinks we are fat, she thinks we have ugly skin (my freckles especially), and she thinks Val is a babe who couldn't possibly have had three children. We may have told her we were all one family, and she was rather confused at our varying appearances. She was mostly concerned that Sara and I were so atrocious looking and Chris was so very handsome. She amused us for a short while, until she got insulting. After a long ride and a bumpy sleep on a skinny train bed beside an open hallway, we arose in Beijing and jetted across the city to catch a plane. Jetting across cities was a task we did often on our week holiday. From Beijing we flew to Lanzhou.
The overnight train compartment (the bunks go three high on either side)
Lanzhou is the capital of Gansu, and is particularly well known for heavy pollution and beef noodles. We actually found it less smoggy than expected, and enjoyed downing large bowls of their famous dish! We arrived late in the evening to Lanzhou, so our time on Saturday was spent scrounging for food and then we went to settle in a real bed for a night. We ended up eating hot pot at a restaurant with no English menu or pictures, so we just wandered around the restaurant and pointed at the dishes of other customers. Fortunately they customers found it amusing, rather than offensive, so we were able to get a decent meal.
Sara and I practicing how to use Chinese toilets.
We only spent one day in Lanzhou, as our real destination was yet to come. During the day we walked along the Yellow River to see all the sights. First we viewed a giant waterwheel (in Waterwheel Park, of course), and then we moved on to sheep skin rafting. Sheep skin rafting is exactly as it sounds. The raft is made of blown up sheep skins. It is a truly disgusting image, and I wanted to share it with you - so I have included a photo. We took our very small, very tippy, raft down a very polluted river. We felt rather famous, as I think we were the only Westerners in all of Lanzhou, and the ride was a definite highlight! Karl compares all events on the holiday to the hype of the sheep skin raft. All people should experience such a ride. Along the river bank there were many different statues and Chinese art, but I must admit these things do not hold my attention well. We took a gondola across the river to take in the views of the city and see a temple, but it was nothing spectacular. We did enjoy the famous 7 flavour magic tea of Lanzhou though. For 100 RMB each we tasted of the magical herbs, but I was the only one who actually enjoyed it. They put a massive lump of sugar at the bottom of all of our teas!
The auspicious 7 flavour tea
After a healthy meal of beef noodles, and a short exploration of the shopping centre, we were reading to take another overnight train and wave goodbye to Lanzhou. It was a fine stop for a day, but it does not have much to offer for Western tourists. There were some caves I was hoping to visit, but they were actually quite a ways out of town - and too far for our one day stop over.
Next stop: Dunhuang!
Inflated sheep skins used for rafting
Our wee little raft
Our guide
