laughing traveler

So the past few weeks I have been feeling really guilty about missing church. I have gotten to where I spend most weekends in Longhua with Heidi and our new Chinese friends. So I have to wake up by 6am to catch the bus to get to shekou in time for church. But last Sunday I finally woke up at 6am and made the trip back. I was so glad I did. The Church is called a Fellowship because it is not recognized by the Chinese government so it cannot be called a church. It is more like an underground church that is purely word of mouth. We meet at the gym of an international school and the church is run completely by volunteer lay leaders who take turns giving the message each Sunday. So the church has grown so much that every time I go they literally run out of chairs and it is standing room only in the back. The church elders have been told that it is too many people for the gym and the school does not want us there long term. When they announced this on Sunday he said, “What a great problem to...

So on a great hair day I set out to see the famous rice terrace! Which are beautiful mountains covered in rice fields as far as you can see and little villages where the farmers live. It’s about a 2 hour bus ride to the rice terrace and we were in a group of all Chinese except for one couple from Portugal. So the tour guide spoke in Chinese first and then did a quick translation for us. I don’t remember the guides name, he was no Young-young but still cracked me up. So he tells us, “70% of the money you paid for the tour pays for the bus, so no sleeping! look at all the beautiful mountains everywhere we go and get your moneys worth, when it gets dark then you can sleep!” we unload the huge tour bus and stand around careful not to lose sight of the tour flag (red and yellow just like 10 other tours had!) waiting for a small bus to take us up the whiney mountain. While we are waiting we find my Aussie friend! Her tour was mostly foreigners but she had been standing around waiting about...

Our second day in Guilin we had another full day planed. Colin was able to hook us up with an English tour group for a boat cruise down the Li River to Yangshao. The saying is, “Guilin is the most beautiful place in china, and Yangshao is the most beautiful part of Guilin.” So expectations were high! We were the first ones on the bus at the butt crack of dawn. For some reason the second we picked up another blonde foreigner I was suddenly a social butterfly. China’s blonde obsession had rubbed off on me. There was a guy about our age working at the world expo and taking a short break with his Dad and sister. His name was…. Umm maybe I am not so good at the introductions we referred to him as Mr. Finland. He said he had been in China for about 4months so he had pretty much master the language, I laughed assuming it was a joke. But then he started talking to the driver in prefect Chinese and I was shocked. Especially since it has taken me 2 months to master hello and thank you! It wasn’...

I don’t know where to start. It was simply gorgeous! The city is known for its Osmanthis trees which happened to be in full bloom while we were there which made the whole place smell like perfume. Which made for a rude awakening when we loaded back on to the crowded bus for Shenzhen and realized that it too had a distinctive smell, garbage! So the bus miraculously makes the 12 hour trip in 9 hours so we get there about 8 am which was an awesome surprise. Luckily, the hotel let us check in early and leave our bags at the hotel while we went in search for the only thing that would make it worth walking around in public after only 6 hours of sleep on a bus; McDonald’s breakfast! It was a long walk but even in my morning funk, I have to be excited about the beautiful scenery. Every block there would a clearing through all the large buildings and you would see the wild mountains in the distance. There was an amazing breeze that made it about 20 degrees cooler than the blistering heat in S...