Hi to all,
Well, we've finished up the volunteer part of our trip & we're in Guang Nan staying in a nice hotel with hot water, clean beds, internet & best of all, heat!!!! First night our internet didn't work & we had to go down to the desk in the a.m. and used the handy dandy talking machine Bekah gave us to tell we didn't have hot water so they turned it on for us by turning a switch located right under their desk & it worked!!! But we switched rooms so night #2 we had it all!! First time since we left home and boy are we loving it....
Guang Nan
This city is a new, neat & large town with a large sports arena in the center as well as a big gov't building...which may explain why it is so nice. The streets are wide lined with fancy tiled sidewalks and there must be t 10 -12 new buildings going up.
Mandarins
Now we've eaten mandarins in the country that speaks Mandarin.
Xanadu
Every heard of Xanadu--the most beautiful city that you can only reach by boat on a river that runs through a looong cave in a huge mountain??? Well, we went there. We went through three caves each was about the size of Mammoth Cave. Gorgeous. Many sections were lit up with colored lights. The boat was long and powered by a man standing on the end using a bamboo pole. No lifejackets --of course. In between the mountains, was the city--let's just say it was hardly the most beautiful and we saw trucks dumping load of gravel to use in the many building projects going on--well at least the boat ride was
most beautiful.
Food
Rice. Noodles--usually made of rice flour. Vegetables & roots--often ones we'd never seen or heard of--in various sauces (usually hot) & combinations. Small bits of meat usually mostly fat & egg omelets with greens. Sometimes all boiled together in a central hot pot full of soup. That's what we eat every day, every meal. Healthy--yes. Roger eagerly tries everything and enjoys most of it. Jane tries a little bit and enjoys less...but usually has been able to find Coke Zero and along with her nuts, peanut butter & m&m's is doing fine..... While in Guang Nan we tried to find a "western" meal. The clerk at the hotel desk just laughed. So why do we have so many Chinese restaurants in USA but they don't have any American here????
