Gam Bay!! (Chinese for“bottoms up”!)

It’s Monday and we’ve finally had a relaxing few days without running here and there.  We are still in Huo Zhou but we are done teaching.  We are going to have a pretty full schedule of traveling and sightseeing from here on out, yay!  I just had two guys in the hotel room working hard to get our internet fixed, thank goodness!  Our last day of teaching was a success. We had a parent day and we shared songs and student work.  We also gave out certificates and said our goodbyes to the kids.  One of the students wrote us the nicest letter thanking us for teaching him.  That evening, to end our teaching time, our Housewives of Huo Zhou took us out for an amazing meal.  The restaurant put us in this huge private room with the biggest round table and lazy susan we’ve ever seen!  They brought out delicious dish after dish and we had a great time saying farewell to our amazing hosts.  We couldn’t have asked for better care!Yesterday we went to another mountain, this time it was only a short 35 minute bus ride with no switchbacks J  It was absolutely beautiful, with trees and mountains and beautiful rocks with streams running through them.  It was a pretty rigorous hike up and down stairs and trails.  The fresh air feels amazing after breathing so much pollution in the city.  There was this beautiful pagoda built into the mountain and on the way back down, we decided to stop and rest there for awhile.  We went in and there were some Chinese people having a picnic.  They needed a knife to cut their watermelon so we let them borrow one of the sharp pens we stole from a hotel.  Soon we were all long lost friends.  They shared their food and cocktails and we cheered (“gam bay” in Chinese is what we say and it means “bottoms up”!) over and over.  We sang Happy Birthday and Jingle Bells together and one of our girls serenaded them with Justin Bieber’s “Baby Baby”.  We had a fabulous time, all the while not being able to speak each other’s language.  The liquor ran out and one of the men ran down the mountain and came back with about 6 bottles of beer.  It’s definitely times like that which make traveling to another country so fun.  We got back and took a LONG nap then had dinner of beef, soup, vegetables, dumplings, steamed buns, and tea.  After dinner, one of our hostesses took 7 of us to get massages.  We had a fabulous 60 minute massage for only 60 yuan (about $9 US).  We are relaxed…Our agenda for the rest of the trip is to travel to Xi’an for 3 days to see the Terra Cotta Warriors and anything else that is there, then back to Huo Zhou for 2 days.  This is kind of our home base because the Chinese government is paying for us to stay here.  Next we will make our way slowly back to Beijing with stops along the way to see a Hanging Monastery and Buddha paintings in Da Tong.  We should arrive in Beijing on the August 4th and we will be going to the Forbidden City, the Silk Market and hopefully lots of shopping!  We’ll hopefully have internet throughout and be able to update you on the rest of our adventures.  I’m sure these last few weeks are going to fly!  **Sorry we haven’t been able to post pictures, it’s just too difficult to do it all through a third party.  We’ll have a photo night at one of our houses when we get back J