A great camping trip.

I got back today from camping in the mountains with the middle schoolers. We had a great time. Being that we were in the mountains, the weather was much cooler than Chengdu's.
We left Friday morning from school in three different buses. The drive up was beautiful. When we got into the mountains, we were along a river the whole way up. I really enjoyed driving through all the tiny little villages along the way. It seemed that growing corn for feed was how most of the people up there made their living. There were little patches of corn stalks growing anywhere they could manage to grow the corn. It was amazing seeing the corn growing up along the side of the mountain, with the villagers walking up and down the mountain with these big baskets on their backs tending the corn. They would hang the corn cobs all along the rafters and roof of their houses to dry. After the corn had dried, they would shuck the corn and leave the kernels scattered on the ground to continue drying. It was really amazing seeing tiny little village after another making it's living off of the corn. No factories, tractors or machines- everything done totally by hand.

As we got higher into the mountains, the road got very narrow- just wide enough for one vehicle at a time. On one side of the road was the rocky mountain side, and the other side was a cliff overlooking the river. There was rock slide residue everywhere. Often there was barely enough room for our bus to squeeze past the boulders and rocks that had slid into the middle of the road. I was a little nervous of having a boulder come through my window.

The camping place we were staying at was part of a hotel. We unloaded our gear and took a little train farther back into the valley where the cabins were at. It was a beautiful valley with a river running right past our cabins. There were cows and chickens roaming freely. Also there were goats right in the middle of the site, but they were tied up. Each night, a huge bonfire was built inside of a circus-looking tent where they roasted a whole goat, chickens, and rabbits. I will try to get a picture of the goat being roasted from a friend and post it later.

We were there from Friday to Monday. Friday was drizzly, but cleared up in the evening. Saturday was beautiful- I even got a little sun burnt. Sunday it rained the whole day, but the kids did great and still had lots of fun. Monday was clear, but we left at 11 to head back to school.

China is a beautiful country. I wish I could have stopped at each little village to take pictures of the people and their way of living. The old men out in the country still wear the dark blue coats and the dark blue hats. (This is how all men dressed during the cultural revolution in the 1960s). The old women were all wearing a turban like hat, although I'm not sure why they wear these hats. It's like going back in history driving through the countrysides of China. America really has nothing in comparison.