China's National Holiday Unit 2.

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-

This girl was so cute, I had to take a picture.

Yellow Crane Tower

huge bell

Eating some dried pineapple. Michael loves it!

Boy dressed up as a soldier. 

serene michael

posey lauren

don't really know how this works, but it looks awesome!

this Lion Dog was twerking hardcore

Mosaic in the tower

more trained mokiki's

the lake

Beautiful Sunset

We then went find dinner at one of the markets, but pretty much only found shopping. I was okay with it :]

Cool guy blowing glass, reminded us of Matthew.

Taking selfies in the bathroom. HA

eating my first mini watermelon! 

Cool lights and stuff. 

The next morning we headed out to East Lake (which was free) and walked around. It was super pretty and big! Some people would bring a tent and sit in the grass and play all day. 

some parasailing on the lake

they had these peddle boats that looked like cars..it was the funniest thing.

random elephant

Koi pond. These guys were HUGE. I've never seen them so big. 

we're cute. 

On our last day we headed out to the beach park across the river. We took the metro over so it was super simple to find, but we got there pretty early and it was kinda dead for a while, so we napped on a big rock.

We found a Daylight Donuts! How random, but they didn't have any bear claws, so we settled for apple fritter. 

We rented this two man bike which was way fun...but there was some sort of construction so we could only ride a quarter of the way...which was a bummer. So we practiced weaving in and out of stuff. 

Saw these and knew I had to have one. For only 20RMB! Her name is Meimei and she likes vines and leaves.

This woman was so incredible! She has burns on most of her body and has lost all her fingers. So she had to use the bottom joints of what was left to paint. She was SO good. Every time someone would put money in here box she would reply "xie xie!", she never missed one person. Also, if you gave her your name she would paint it for you free of charge! I loved that, it didn't make you feel like it was a bargaining thing and it felt good to give her some money. Since we don't have chinese names (she could only do characters) we chose the words for music and love. SUPER CHEESE. whatevs, its cool. The little girl behind her had some sort of skin problem that made her face swollen and red. She was so patient just sitting there, but I could tell she was bored. So I bought her a little toy :] she really liked it. 

This is the painting. 

So that was our trip to Wuhan and the end of National Holiday. We got some sort of food poising the night before we left....which was no bueno. And I was super grateful that we were taking a fast train that took 3 hours instead of 9. Luckily we had a couple days to recover before classes started. :]

well-

That's all folks!

(lo)ve+michael