Vacation

After a long week of school last week (including Saturday), our spring holiday officially began. Anita, SuiKi, Anjali, and I planned a trip to Guilin and Yangshuo, but since the first direct flight was on Monday, we decided to relax in Dalian on the weekend. The weather was perfect! It was like a cool summer day in Vancouver. We met up for lunch at our favourite jiao zi place - da ching jiao zi (I think) for our favourite mutton and cilantro dumplings. After lunch, we headed over to Er Chi to get some dresses made for Ryan's wedding in May. It took a lot longer than expected to choose a design and fabric, but I'm excited to see the final result next week. Then Anita and I met up with Mark and took a bus to his place. He was trying to convince me to stay with them, but I really wanted to get outside and explore and then stay at the spa, so I hopped off the bus at XingHai park. It is so picturesque in that area and there are so many things to see and do. I was tempted to take a zipline for only 60 kuai, but I'm saving it for when my friends are with me. I walked along the ocean for hours, all the way to XingHai square where I met up with Anita. We treated ourselves to ice cream and took a moterboat ride on the ocean. Then I headed out to the spa for my overnight stay. It was so crowded there (probably because of the May holiday) that I wasn't able to get a table for a scrubdown. I kept going into different hot tubs, and then checking to see if there were available tables. I really must not have been thinking. It was 7 pm and I hadn't eaten dinner because I was waiting for the free spa food at 11 pm. After the hot tubs, I tried one sauna after another and there still weren't any tables. Finally I saw an open table and I walked up and pointed to it (my feeble attempt of asking if I could lie down). The masseuse shook her head "no" and at that point I started to see spots and my head felt funny. I felt my body crumple like a house of playing cards - first my knee hit the cement floor, then my hand, and finally my head (it's pretty amazing how the body crumples to save your head from too much damage). The next thing I knew I was sitting on a bench and two of the spa ladies were holding my arms and offering me water. I was fine after a few minutes but exhausted, so I went to sleep at 9 and didn't get up until 7:30. I met up with Anjali, Anita and SuiKi at the qing gui and we took a plane to Guilin. It's so lush and green here compared to Dalian, where things are only starting to bloom.

We took a bamboo raft to Elephant trunk hill as soon as we put our things into the Backstreet International Youth Hostel. We were located perfectly by the river in the middle of the pedestrian shopping area. At night we explored the markets and met a local who spoke almost perfect English. He let us sample some of his small village's green tea and recommended a restaurant where we ate some delicious fish for dinner. The streets were alive well into the night and the warm air kept the locals and tourists outside. I'll hopefully post some pictures soon, but for now we're going bike riding and picking up some fruit (mmm, mangos :)