The Week in Yang Ling, China

So I better get to finishing up china before I get way too behind! I finished up the last post recapping Sunday in Xi'an. We went to an incredible branch there and drew the crowd at the Big Goose Pagoda. Alright, back on track. Most of the week from here on out consisted of sightseeing around Yang Ling (the town where we stayed and where the University - North West - that Braden and Ari teach at is located) in the morning, with attending & assisting with Braden and Ari's classes in the afternoon.

The students were incredible. Once again, the spirit of the Chinese was just so unique. There English was actually really good and the classes were so much fun to help out with. Bill and I learned a lot from helping out in the classrooms and hopefully we helped Braden and Ari out a bit.

So clearly there are more adventures left to tell, our week had barely begun in China. We did some really great things in the mornings we had. One day we went to the greenhouses that the University runs. That was super interesting. I have never been in such an expanse of greenhouses. They are conducting a lot of research there and doing a lot of their growing with hydroponics. For those of you who don't know what that is, a very rough explanation is that you are basically growing plants in a medium with a nutrient solution instead of soil. Anyhow it was really interesting and they just had rows and rows of plants all growing upward, maximizing growing space.

That same morning we went to some of the museums on campus. These were actually really incredible. The main attraction there is a Butterfly museum which was really cool. All sorts of butterfly and insect info and specimens. Then they actually had a butterfly garden with many varieties of live butterflies. But the coolest thing was the butterfly art. There were these incredibly intricate art pieces created from butterfly wings! It was so crazy and so beautiful. I'll put up a picture but it will in no way do it justice. This art is 3-D and created from various colors of butterfly wings, I cannot even imagine how many butterflies you have to acquire to make some of these pictures, nor can I imagine the time it would take to make the beautiful images they made. So that was really neat to see.

Oh, one of the major highlights for the entire trip was the spectacular bike ride we took around the Chinese countryside! We ended up borrowing some bikes from some other students in the International dorm and cruised out of the city to check out the countryside of the area and it was so awesome! As all three of us are definitely more country kids it was so great to be out of the city and it was just awesome. The countryside was beautiful and the people were just as beautiful!

Yes, my total wipe out surely did happen on this bike ride for those of you who have heard about this. I'll tell the story but really the video is really where it is at, since I was filming when I wrecked. So you can check out the video on facebook or when I figure out how to get videos up on the blog I'll attempt that. Anyhow I suppose the background for the story is that it is wheat harvesting season up there in China and everyone gets to be involved in the process whether you want to or not. I say that because they lay the wheat all over the roads so that all the vehicles will drive over it and thrash the wheat. Pretty resourceful I think! Anyhow, so we were just biking over the wheat, just doing our part ya know! Bill was filming and he asked me to bike up there so he could get someone else on film, then his battery was going out so he wanted me to film him. Well I think you can see the disaster developing . . . the camera trade off went well and I started filming Bill and then it went down hill. I totally lost control and started veering and by the way, wheat on cement is very slippery, and there was no hope for regaining control. I was all over the place and went down hard core. It was great! The camera went tumbling end over end and the screen went black. Bill was off his bike in a flash but don't worry not to offer any assistance, he was laughing so hard he was crying and pointing. He grabbed the camera, hoping to get it on film but the screen was black at this point, apparently cameras don't do well when thrown to the ground. Anyhow Braden was bringing up the tail end so he got the whole show. It was definitely a highlight for them. Everyone knew about it the next morning even before I had seen anyone and it was on facebook. So needless to say it was a great story to tell from our biking adventure. I just have to keep things exciting you know. :)

So to finish up our time in Yangling we of course had to experience karaoke in Asia. The karaoke is awesome over there, very different from in the states. It is really popular but you go to more private rooms where you can be with just your group or your friends, so you're not singing in front of everyone at the entire establishment. A much friendlier, less intimidating environment. And some of the karaoke places are super posh posh! So that was way fun.

We also had lunch the last day in Yangling with our dear friends Johnny and Susan. They were so great! They took us to lunch and gave us little departing gifts. They gave Bill a stamp, I got earrings and they gave us both a Chinese star for good luck. Oh and they also provided Bill with his favorite meal in China.

Okay, last thing in Yangling we played Werewolf our last night. It was so crazy. We played with probably 25 people from the international dorm and we had probably 10-15 different nationalities and languages all playing this game together, it was really fun. I must say though I have never played werewolf quite like that, it was really like playing with a bunch of teenage boys, but it was way fun! That mostly sums up the brief overview of our short time in Yangling. We left the next morning to spend the weekend in Xi'an.