So We're Not Going To The Mountain?

This past weekend, we went on a school sponsored trip to Huangshan, which is known to many as Yellow Mountain. We went prepared to hike another mountain, and after a 6 hour bus ride, we found out that the plan had changed and they had decided not to go on the mountain, so we were taken around the city of Huangshan instead. For a good part of the bus ride, the tour guide was at the front giving the history of the area and the mountain, but it was all in Chinese despite the fact that the majority of the 40 people on our bus couldn't speak Chinese. So, we got on and off the bus when we were told and had people translate how long we had at each place for us. It was definitely an interesting adventure to not have any idea where you were. We started at an old house of a rich person that was full of gardens and awesome architecture which we really liked. All Joe kept saying was that he wanted to live there. We had beautiful weather (around 85 F) which was great for walking around in our hiking clothes.

Entrance to the house area

Cool old wooden architecture - no screws or bolts used.

We really liked these carved doors and windows that were everywhere

and these cool shaped windows

We found a mini mountain to hike (a collection of rocks)!

Look Mom, I did it!

Joe made it all the way to the top!

Trying to push the stone ball but I wasn't strong enough.

After the house, we went to an ancient little town that was on a river. There was some cool scenery and lots of young people sitting around drawing or painting the scenes. We wandered around for an hour or so and then hopped back on the bus.

This guy was on our trip.. and I thought I stood out.

That night, we stayed in a hotel that was included in our trip fee and the next morning we woke up early and went on a boat ride on a huge river. We stopped at a couple of different villages, but mostly just sat out in the sun on the top of the boat for a few hours. 

This sign was on the boat.. gotta love Chinese translations!

This was a 1000 year old tree that had a fake tree friend to hold up the sagging branches.

Overall, it was different than we expected the trip to be in that we didn't see the mountain and we couldn't understand what was happening the whole time, but we had only paid $30 for it and that included the bus trip, the food and the hotel for the night so we really couldn't complain.

As of right now, that concludes all of our traveling since we are running out of money and traveling is exhausting. We have really loved every trip we did and covered everything that we wanted to, so now we are going to spend our last 4 weeks doing some final things in Shanghai and preparing to come home!