06/14/2015 One
hour church is kind of nice. I know we
will really be plunged into the thick of Church things once we return. We had President Mitchell over for dinner as
Vernita was back in the states. He had
never seen our side of town before or taken a bus. (But they have lived in China for a couple of
years – and they’ve never taken a bus!! – they never had to) He did have his driver come get him for the
trip back to their fancy high rise. This
was to be our last week of teaching school.
Tuesday we returned to some of our favorite free museums here. First we stopped at the Sichuan Museum. They had a traveling Cartier jewelry exhibit
that is making its way around the world.
We probably paid $25 each to see it when it came to Houston, yet it was
free here. Afterwards we walked to the Embroidery
Museum where they show how Chinese brocade fabric is woven on old looms and the
hand stitched art work. I was determined
to purchase some before we left. Dinner
of course was at Big Pizza – our last time.
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| Final visit to Big Pizza |
06/18/2015 This
was our last day of school – more sweet than bitter. And it finally came to pass. There were times that I didn’t think I would
make it, coming up with so many lessons from scratch was really difficult. And then I have that perfection mindset
thing……. We celebrated that evening with
dinner at Peter’s Tex Mex. Friday we
went to the Jurassic World movie and that night had our student friend,
Michael, over to make cookies. Somewhere
during this point we had an extended version Lord of the Rings movie marathon,
watching the entire thing over a series of evenings. Fun!
And then I was eating some almond candy that didn’t quite
set up and it pulled off a crown from one of my back teeth. Couldn’t it have waited one more week when I
would be back in the USA? Thank goodness
I knew a good dentist by then and traveled back to his office to have it glued
back on. This time he charged 100 yuan
($16). Sunday we had a fabulous lunch at
the McKay’s and then a dinner at the Whittons.
Everyone was trying to use up their food supplies before coming the US
for the summer.
06/22/1025 We left
today for our final scenic tour in China.
On our own we set up a trip to what is supposed to be one of the
prettiest alpine vistas in the world. We
flew to the Jiuhuang airport. It is on
the edge of the Tibetan Plateau and 11,155 feet in elevation. The sky was blue and there was open range
with green grass, such a change. It’s
about a hundred miles north of where we lived in Chengdu but it would take
about 9 hours on a windy road bus trip and I am so over long bus rides. A private tour guide and driver met us there and
took us about an hour’s drive to the first park called Huanglong (Yellow
Dragon). We first took a cable car up
part of the mountain and then walked through a forest up to the top of the
valley and then along the ponds back down to the bottom. There were little huts along the way where
you could buy cans of oxygen in case you needed it. It was so pretty. It was a series of cascading blue pools, hot
springs and waterfalls. It started to
rain on us at one point but we had umbrellas.
Pictures will not do it justice.
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| Cascading Pools at Huanglong |
From here we were driven about two hours to Jiuzhaigou
Valley where we spent the next two nights in a nice Sheraton hotel. The drive was through a deep, narrow valley
with tall trees and jagged rocks.
Beautiful! In the morning we
entered Jiuzhaigou Park, a UNESCO World Heritage site (as was the one
yesterday) and also designated a World Biosphere Reserve. Thanks to having a personal guide we got to
skip a long line at the ticket booth.
The name means Nine Villages, after the nine Tibetan villages along the
way, seven of which are still inhabited.
Private cars are not allowed on the roads through the park so they have
hop on, hop off busses (which can get very crowded at times).
It usually takes two days to see everything, but because it
was a slower time of the year and we had a guide we were able to do it all in a
long day. It was another case of scenic
overload, you can only oooh and ahhh so much.
We must have taken a 1000 pictures.
It had multi-layered waterfalls seeming to come out of the roots of the
trees and impossibly blue lakes. The
best time to see it would be in the fall when the changing leaf colors add to
the effect.
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| Jiuzhaigou ("joe-jai-go") blue lakes |
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| Jiuzhaigou waterfalls |
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| Pictures can't do it justice - very beautiful! |
After a dinner back at the hotel we were able to see an
indoor musical (sort of) about the Tibetan people. Lots of dancing and colorful costumes – very
entertaining.
In the morning we were
driven back to the airport. On the way
we stopped at a monastery where our guide’s teen-aged son was living. We also saw a very young boy (maybe 8 years
old?) there dressed up in a monk outfit.
How can someone that young decide that he wants to be a monk and not
ever marry?
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| Young Monks |
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| Prayer flags on the mountain |
We had to wait a few hours
at the airport for the clouds to clear before we could take off. From the plane we could see many high peaks
sticking up out of the clouds but I don’t suppose any of them were
Everest. We were so glad that we took
this last trip and saw such beauties of nature.
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