Shanshui - Mountains and Water (and O the heat)

Trip Start Jun 10, 2008
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Trip End Jan 25, 2009


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Where I stayed
Buckland Group teaching training college
(Yangshuo hotels)

Flag of China  , Guangxi Zhuang,
Saturday, August 23, 2008

Ah Yangshuo...  A very small town by Chinese standards, yet everyone speaks better English than on the Beijing University campus.  Why?  The beauties of tourism.  But really, who wouldn't want to come here?  It's beautiful like you wouldn't believe.  I mark my experience here down as an incredibly positive one.  The Buckland staff is excellent, if not entirely efficient, and friendly.  Betts, the Canadian ex-businesswoman turned Chinese-English-teacher-teacher was excellent.  Quite authoritative and rarely authoritarian: I learned a lot.  And the other teaching students were better than I could have hoped for.  When I first got here, I remember just being like shit, this week is going to suck.  By arriving a day early, I got to meet the previous week's group of teachers.  very nice people but mostly 2.5-3 times my age.  As the next group creeped in, I was much relieved thankfully.

This was a group of people here in China for the right reasons Yangshuo 1
Yangshuo 1
 .  All very well-traveled, very keen on learning Chinese, and very appreciative and curious about every aspect of the culture the people.  And fans of bars to boot.  I felt like I was in a good company of like-minded people.  Plus, now I have friends scattered across this huge country to facilitate any inklings to travel I might have and satisfy my desire for nightlife and westerner-contact.

I kicked off my week with a nice, long walk.  And yep, sure is beautiful.  No real way to describe it, so I won't even try.  My roommate Brent showed up the next day (Saturday).  Good guy, only 2 years older than me.  Just graduated with an accounting major and decided that maybe 22 isn't the best time to start a career crunching numbers.  We took a nice, long bike ride around town, and yep, still beautiful.  The town is admittedly a bit too touristy - they have better American food than Bel Air.  But once you hit the town limits (not far) it really is rivers winding around fields dotted with bizarre mountains everywhere you look.  And people living a relaxing truly southern way.  Nice place.  I'll break my week up into three parts.  This is the end of part one.
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