Yangshuo

Hello all, and happy Thanksgiving!

Here is what I have been up to the past few days:
Tuesday night, Trevor arrived back at the Program House just in time to catch a train with Katie and I to Guilin, the capital of Guanxi province. Apparently traveling alone wasn't all he had hoped it would be, so he decided to come traveling with us. The train ride was about 19 hours long and not nearly as painful as one would expect. We had bunk beds for seats and there was a dining car to have lunch in. We arrived in Guilin around 4:00 Wednesday and after a quick trip to the PSP to work on Katie's visa, we took a one hour bus to Yangshuo. The area is absolutely beautiful. The land is very flat except for these huge limestone boulders that come shooting straight up out of the ground. I have been told that it all used to be under the ocean. The center of Yangshuo is very touristy - looks a little bit like Dali. But it isn't hard to get away from the tourists. Our guesthouse, called the Outside Inn, is about 4 km outside of town in a small village. It is the low season for tourists, so we are pretty much the only ones staying at the guesthouse.
Thursday morning we woke up and ate breakfast at the guesthouse before heading out on the moutain bikes that we rented. We biked down to the river where we put out bikes onto bamboo rafts and floated down the river. About an hour later, we got back off the rafts and biked about 20 minutes to the bottom of Moon Hill - one of the huge limestone boulders with a path up the side so that you can climb it. We had lunch at the bottom where we tried our first steamed taro. The dish is very popular in this province. It is a weird root thing that tastes a bit like potato, but is much more exciting. After lunch, we climbed to the top of Moon Hill and enjoyed the view of the valley and the surounding boulders before climbing back down. We then started biking back to our guesthouse - about an hour and a half ride. On the way back, we passed these orange orchards where a bunch of kids a little older than us were picking oranges. We stopped to talk to them and they offered us oranges for free. We decided that it would be fun to come back and pick oranges for a day, so we asked them if we could come back tomorrow and help. They said yes and so we headed off, stoked for the next day. Near the orchards, we biked through a han village that looked very peaceful and a perfect location for a homestay, so we are thinking that we might try to set that up in a few days.
We returned home around 5:30 and showered, played pool, and relaxed until dinner. Thanksgiving dinner - it was so good. Not very traditional, but a delicous feast nonetheless. We ordered 7 or so dishes for the 3 of us including currie chicken, lemon chicken, potato-crisp-pancake-thing, sweat and sour vegetables, pumpkin, and rice. Thanksgiving done China-style. It was great.
After dinner we rolled ourselves up to bed. Right now, Trevor and I are in town doing internet (clearly), setting up rockclimbing for tomorrow, and getting ready to head over to the orchard to pick oranges.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving!