Our wonderful friend and liaison Jessie has been wanting to take us out for hot pot for a while now. We were finally able to find a time and went with her "sister" (in China, you're closest friends are referred to as your siblings, so it can get confusing) her sister's son and two friends. 

The way hot pot around here works, if you've never been, (and if you have then pish posh guess you can zone out for few minutes) is your start out with the main course in our case it was snakehead fish.

 [little side note for those of you who don't know me, I used to HATE cooked fish and now I actually like it, so this was a big step, but I still HATE shrimp, sorry mom]

After you've finished that, they turn on the burner underneath and add a broth to it. Once it starts boiling, they bring out raw meat (we had mutton) and these veggie almost like a meatloaf balls haha- balls, and some lettuce and spinach. It was SO delicious, it all had a nice flavor because of the fish. Oh, we ate so much...so so much. I felt like this.

Once we were done stuffing our faces, we headed to Wengcheng Park. It's like 4 attractions put in one spot! First off they have a beautiful flower garden area, which is free to walk around and such. In the springtime their peonies bloom and it supposed to be the most beautiful thing ever; maybe we'll have to come back to see it or something :D. Next they have an amusement park with your basic carnival rides. We went on a few which were somewhat over priced, but whatevs. Next they have an ocean park where you have to pay extra- so we didn't go in. And lastly they have the zoo, which we did pay to go into because its pretty cool/depressing. Zoos are different in China, they don't really try to make the habitats look like their surroundings at home. And people can basically throw whatever food they want to the animals because there aren’t really any employees around. At the Macaque exhibit, there was even this poor female mokiki with half of her right cheek hanging off!! It looked fresh too, like she had gotten in a fight with another monkey. The cheek was just hanging there, I tried to find a worker but no one was around. It makes me so sad just thinking about it. It put a real damper on the whole rest of the zoo experience.

Here are some pictures for your viewing pleasure. I forgot to take pictures at lunch with the hot pot, so I guess we’ll have to go again!! Buahahaha

 Sorry, this is a random picture, but he was so cute!! I had to show you guys. 

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We had the opportunity to go see the Shaolin Temple with our foreign language teachers from the middle school. It was about an hour out of town, so we could definitely go again since the grounds are so big and we only saw a small portion.

One of the main purposes for this place is to teach Kung Fu. Our Chinese friend, Linda, was telling us how the grounds and the temples were over 1500 years old! So crazy to see all these trees with holes in them from finger practicing. We also got there pretty early so we were able to see all the kids practicing their Kung Fu. I was amazed by how flexible they all were! We were also able to see a Kung Fu show where they showcased the five animals that they emulate when practicing Kung Fu. There was the crane, tiger, snake, dragon, and leopard. It was said that this method had originated at this temple as well. So it was legit!! They also had volunteers come up and try the different animals with them, it was pretty hilarious.

Here are the pictures from our visit-

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Wuhan

After we got home from Yuntai Shan we headed out again to take an overnight train to Wuhan. We were in hard seats so it was difficult to sleep and the lights were on the whole time. But it was a good experience all the same. For Chinese people this is the most common way to travel, so we felt fully immersed in the culture.

Wuhan holds a lot of history for China. It was once three separate cities, but now they are districts combined to make Wuhan. It is also known for its huge river, Yangtze River, someone told us it was one of the biggest ones in China. Our hostel was fairly close to some touristy areas so we hit those up first.

We visited this park where they had so so many different buildings and landmarks. The most notable one is the Yellow Crane Tower.  It had a beautiful and very large mosaic piece inside, we could have gone up to the top to look out, but the crowds were huge and it would have been a flashback to Yuntai Shan (no thank you). 

Here are the pictures from that excursion-

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China's got this rad National Holiday that is a week long. I'm not sure who exactly gets all the days off- but we did and it was so great to have a break.

Since we planned our trip to Xi'an our brains didn't realize how close the holiday was, so we had to settle for the trips that weren't all booked out. We were actually pretty happy that we didn't go to the huge tourist cities because it probably would have been sheer madness!

We first went to Yuntai Shan (mountain) which was not too far from our city- but the way we got there took FOREVER. The bus drivers would wait until the whole bus was full and then pick up more on the way. Since it took so long we were only able to see one part of the mountain. The place is kind of like Zion's where you have a bunch of places you can go and you take buses and stuff.

This first area was SO pretty BUT the line was hell or mordor. Straight up. I mean it was okay in the beginning when we were thinking- oh it'll be just around this corner...or this corner...but 500 corners and 2 hours later of jam packed lines and sweaty smoking Chinese people we finally reached our destination. At that point I was a major grumpa pants and didn't even want to stay and enjoy the water :[
but the pictures we got are beautiful and at least we can enjoy those :]

This area was Cornel Peak

going through the cave

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I've finally found the time to do this post! 

A little intro-

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