Elephant Park!

One day at the beginning of trip, our group was walking around town and we came across this park with New Years decorations! Andrea and I thought it was really cool :) So we decided to hurry and go take pictures with them!! I would like to say that everything was new to us then, so we had to take pictures of everything, but we still do that!! We thought we were funny trying to be like the chinese children statues


As we were hurrying back to catch up with our groups the street cleaner ladys and the park guard stop us, which worried us a little, and motioned us towards the elephants! They then proceeded to tell us we needed to climb up onto the elephants and take our picture :) We thought we were in trouble at first, but they just understood our desire to take lots of pictures!! So we did as we were told and took pictures on the elephants!!


Every since this day we have called the park elephant park! We had not gone into the park to see what it was, it was just the mysterious elephant park! Finally last week we got to go adventure through and it was really pretty!


Its just a small park, not much there, mainly just a pretty pavillion and a little waterfall!

After we took some pictures and went to walk away mist started coming out over the water! It was so cool looking, it left a light mist over everything! So we took more pictures ;) These would be our cool Kung Fu moves we had just learned!


Afterwards we went back to our apartments and everyone was gone. So we went out and got our hair massaged and straightened! :) We have a small addiction to getting done, it feels so good!! They massage our head and neck for about 30 minutes and your hair feels SO GOOD after! :)

A Weekend In Paradise... Sanya, China!

It is almost time for our next vacation!! Yippie... Great Wall of China here we come :) As we are planning for our Beijing trip and getting reservations set, I realized I still have not posted about our last vacation to SANYA! Our trip to Sanya was so wonderful and relaxing! Sanya is considered Chinas Hawaii! Its at the very very southern tip of China! We went as far down as you can go here, which was fun! It was deffinitely a tropical paradise! Our journey to Sanya was an adventure! We started out with a 10 hour bus ride, which should seem really awful, but that long of a ride does not even phase me anymore! We rode a sleeper bus which is always nice! Its like a big sleepover with a bunch of random strangers! The only way to describe the bus would be the Night Bus on Harry Potter!
We get pretty silly after a few hours on the bus

I used the bathroom on the bus for the first time, and oh was that an experience!! Imagine an old bus going down a bumpy old road swaying back and forth and then trying to use a squatter toilet through all of this! :) Its great! During the middle of the night we had a drunk guy take over our head teachers bed because he was too drunk to climb up into his!
After 10 hours on the bus they made us get off and put all our luggage onto another bus... but then they would not let us get onto the bus! We were not really sure what was going on, but we had to wait in a building for awhile to find out we were taking a ferry and hopefully our bus was coming on the ferry with us! It was pretty interesting getting off not knowing if we would see our luggage every again! :) We did find our bus and after another 5 hours on that bus we made it to Sanya!
It was so fun to wake up and look out the window... and there is the ocean!! :) It is gorgeous, and I have never been to Hawaii but it seems to compare well!

As soon as we got into our rooms and unpacked we headed straight to the beach and stayed there all day!! The ocean was very fun to play in, because it was SO WARM! We even found a nice empty spot so we felt like we had the whole beach and ocean to ourselves!! Walking around on the beach we saw a lot more white people than expected :) It was interesting to find out that Sanya is actually where a lot of the Russians go for their vacation! So we met people from all over there!


It was really intersting to be walking down the beach and have it be so nice and beautiful, but then walking down the stree to our hostel it was the old China, people living on the streets, down alleyways with barely anything. It was sad the conditions these people live in.

We took a bus into town :) In Zhongshan we have seated buses and you rarely have to stand up in the aisles, but these buses were mostly standing room only and you were packed in next to everyone else! Good thing we all like each other, but it is crazy how many people they will squeeze onto one bus!!

Downtown was a lot more rundown and creepy than we are used to! We liked it :) We were searching for a place to eat and all the restraunts were little holes in the wall and everyone had bare feet with them up on the tables, food everywere! Dogs running around eating the food off the ground, you know you are not in America at that point :D Its fun to see places like this so you can appreciate where you are from!!
The ride back to our hostel was the best!! We got one of the carts where your driver is on a motorized bike and you sit behind! We had so much fun with it, we were laughing the whole way back and taking pictures. Our driver would stick his head back to try and be in the picture with us and he was laughing at us laughing! Its silly experiences like this that make us all happy!!

Yes Andrea is sitting on our laps, we didn't really fit, but we only wanted to pay for 1 so we just squeezed us all in!! :D
It felt so good to go back and talk a walk down the beach at night! This photo was an attempt for us to get a picture with us and the water at night.. it was sort of a fail- and I am not sure what face i am pulling :)


We thought about going swimming that night, for some reason it sounded exciting :) But I am really excited we decided against it, becaus the next morning I found a dead Jellyfish on the beach!! Pretty sure he would have been waiting to get me if I would have gone in!! I did touch it he he! It could not sting me, because it was dead!!

The next day was actually easter, our first easter away from home. But if you have to be away, why not spend it away on the beach!! It was a good Easter and we tried to spread the hoppiness around :)

Here is a photo especially for all of you you!!! :) :) :)

Again we played around on the beach! Just sitting on the beach you will have women come up and try forcing you to buy from them! Most of them had mangos and coconuts, some women had jewlery! We were suckered into it all :) The mangos were delicious and so it was actually really nice having them come along throughout the day so you could always have a mango if you wanted one!

Joey and I found skidoos, so we pretended to ride them, which was fun, probably not as fun as it was for our head teacher and her husband who actually took them out one the ocean!

The rest of the trip was really fun! We burried Joey in the sand, drank coconuts on the beach and just explored the area!! It was an amazing vacation and I LOVE the Ocean!!

Pavillions Anyone?! :)

I LOVE Fridays, because they mean KUNG FU and som random adventure!! :) We took our 20 minute bus ride out to the Bond preschool for our Kung Fu lessons! We have so much fun at them, our instructor is Spring and he is hilarous and he has his sidekick who speaks no English but he just smiles and shows us what to do! We are all went out and bought Kung Fu panda afterwards, because of our excitement!
We do not have to be tested, because it is mostly just fun for us, but we still have to go up by ourselves to review the moves for the day! Its hard to take pictures of people doing their routine, but here is some of us!

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Andrea, Erin and I are the consistent Kung Fu goers, sometimes the rest of our group comes along too, but we make sure nothing else gets in the way :)
Here is Spring our instructor showing us how it really is suppossed to be done!

For our after Kung Fu adventure, we went to a park. Their is the statue of Mr. Zhongshan, but behind him is a beautiful park full of pretty pagodas, waterfalls and fish!
The trails around to everything are lined in tall trees that remind us of Alice and Wonderland! Here is Andrea and I trying to hide in them!

I loved this entrance, their are many circle entrances like this around! This is one of my Kung Fu moves that I learned that day!

Their was a little pond with a waterfall going down into it, full of these pretty fish! I especially liked it because all the fish were Orange! We got to feed them, and at one point the lady selling the food comes up with bubbles and blew them all around us!

Here are the stairs going up past the waterfall, so you can get a good view of them! We actually were able to go behind the waterfall too! I can't find that picture for some reason, but when I do, I will put it on here :)

We like to practice our jumping skills for pictures! Here is one of the pavillions

All the stairs led to the top to the little pagoda! :) I like our random parks throughout our city! Its really gorgeous here!

We are making a band!

Yes, it is true, we are making a band in China and we plan to become famous! :) Next week our school is going to be checked out for everything- the people in charge are coming to watch all the teachers teach, even us. So on Thursday the school is putting on a performance to show off all their extra curriculum activities, its really neat what they children are doing. For this performance we have to perform too, so we put together a band! We got to spend a saturday down town at some guys music store! It was fun, they had all the instruments we are used to, but a lot of their chinese instruments. They let us play around so I got to play one of them... I'm not sure what it is called, but I liked it!


Us girls are not doing much of the instrument playing, its mostly the boys! Luckily the guys are all pretty musically talented. Shaw plays the drums professionally and is in a band so he helped set it all up! Anna and I get to play the tambourine!! :) Its fun and pretty simple, so I shouldn't be able to mess that up!


Since it was mostly the boys practicing all day, Andrea and I did what we do best and entertained ourselves with the camera!!

I was very happy to see they had a Hannah Montana Guitar displayed! It must be pretty special because he would not let us touch it, but I could sit by it to take a picture!

Pagodas, Pagodas and more Pagodas!!

So everywhere I go I always find one thing to be obsessed about! Well here in China it has become Pagodas!! I think they are so cool and beautiful, I love the look of them and how in China they seem to resemble a light house! We have two in our city and at night they are lit up real bright on top of the hill!
Downtown we have a place we like to go called walking street! Its like an outside mall but HUGE! We spent a Saturday down there playing and hiked up to one of the pagodas!!
While we were walking around Walking Street we had a group of volunteer students from the college come and talk to us, they were all really cute and just wanted to practice their english! I think we were there for about an hour talking to them, it was fun and we all got free balloons out of it!! :)

The pagoda we went to is ontop of the hightest hill here, so it was a pretty good walk up there

Most things are fun to walk up to around here because there are always cute Chinese looking things along the way! These entrance ways reminded us of going into Mulans yard!

Here is Andrea :) We were trying to take her picture as a group of people came down and they just kept staring at us taking her picture!

Here we are almost to the Pagoda, Its really tropical everywhere in our city, but extremely around the Pagoda, it felt like we were in a jungle

I really like this Pagoda!! :) Its beautiful, it looks really cool from the street at night because its all lit up

I like these Pavillions too :) They were all over by the Pagoda! There was a park where people were playing badmitton and some men were doing Tai Chi

This is Andrea and I being brave and trying something random from a street vendor- that would be him in the background! It really wasn't that bad!

After we found a really good restraunt- i am pretty sure it was Japanese! We had really good Sushi and Seaweed Salad!! :) I love seaweed salad! We could see the men in their cool cooking outfits across from us cooking!