Vacation from Travel

Everyone thinks that what we're doing, living abroad, traveling, seeing the world, that it's the life. We're told pretty regularly how lucky we are. And it's true. We are lucky. And fortunate. And we are living an incredible life that most people only dream of! But even "the life" can get taxing and wear on you, so we decided it was time for a vacation.

What's the difference between our regular life and a vacation, you ask? You have no job, you go where you want, when you want, with little to no restriction or boundaries limiting you. So why, oh why, would you need a vacation from that?! That IS a vacation! 

Well, it sounds like one, yes, but truly, we are traveling, not vacationing, and travel takes a lot of work, energy, and effort some days. Some days it's exhausting, frustrating, or even miserable. Just like any one else's daily life. So just like anyone else, we too need to be able to just take a break and turn off. No stress over traffic, roads, where to stay, what food to order since we can't read the menu, or worse yet, there is only one thing to eat, all day, each meal. Just quiet, calm, no where to go, and not much to do. And we found just the place for it.

A little seaside area called Doc Let in southern Vietnam. There are a number of little resorts in the area; some expensive and exclusive, some for backpackers and partiers. We found a perfect little place aptly named Paradise Resort. Off the beaten path and drawing more of a laid back, yet economically aware crowd, Paradise is exactly that.

There are no tvs in any of the rooms. They serve three meals a day of more westernized food. There is an honesty board for beers and cokes. And we had a second story balcony over looking the sea. 

The number of guests rose and dipped but never reached an overwhelming amount, nor was it ever just Steve and I at any meal. 

We got to rest, relax, even out the tan lines from days of riding, swim in the ocean, meet some wonderful people and exchange travel tales and stories from life back home. We also talked a lot about what was to come with our travels and what we really wanted to do. What was supposed to be 3 or 4 nights effortlessly doubled into 8 before we finally paid our tab and said our goodbyes. 

From our balcony overlooking the beach and cozy property

Our balcony with sea view

One of the things we'd decided was next would be an open water certification course for Steve. Luckily for us, the nearest and cheapest location for diving was a no less than 30 miles from our beachside vacation spot in a place called Nha Trang. We had heard less than ideal things about the city: it's touristy, it's busy, it's tacky. We found these to be fairly true. But we had also heard that there was great western food to be had there at reasonable prices. This came as very happy news for us because eating pho or street noodles had really begun to wear our love of food down. 

Because SE Asia has loads of great places to dive, Steve decided to go on and get his advanced open water certification to increase his diving abilities as we move on to the coming countries. This, coupled with the desire to be somewhere with good food and nice drinks available to us on Christmas seemed like reason enough to stay in Nha Trang. 

Celebrating Christmas Eve at one of the many bars in town

In Nha Trang w/ friends we met at Paradise

So for Christmas eve we spent the morning diving in santa hats. And Christmas day was spent lounging around and eating a lovely steak and seafood dinner that would have easily cost us 70USD back home, but only cost us half that much here. We followed that up with drinks and dessert at a rooftop bar with Home Alone 2 on the television in the corner. Not a traditional Christmas, but then again, we haven't had a traditional holiday celebration in about 2 years, so this should come as no surprise to anyone! 

And though it's late, we hope that all of our friends and family had a wonderful Christmas holiday and are looking forward to the new year as much as Steve and I are. Happy holidays! And we'll be updating you in 2013!!

Steve, his instructor Phil, and Santa in the background

Christmas eve with Santa and Scuba Steve

 

Oh the Things We've Seen!

As is common with my blogging, it's been awhile. Oops. There are reasons for this, but I'll get into that later.

What you really want to know is where the heck are we and what in god's name have we been doing!?! Right? We're still in Vietnam, still riding the motorcycles, and have covered a lot of ground. And apart from a few close calls and one minor incident, we have made it from Hanoi to (not quite there yet) Ho Chi Minh (HCMC) with no major issues on or with the bikes. Once we arrive in HCMC, which is about a two days ride from where we are currently, we will sell the bikes and make our next move accordingly. 

Vietnam is a beautiful country, with varied scenery and picturesque landscapes. There are mountains, rivers, valleys, limestone karsts,  lakes, hills, waterfalls, palm trees, pine trees, super tall skinny trees, ferns, red dirt, brown dirt, no dirt because the vegetation was too thick to see it, fields, rice patties, farms, dirt roads, winding roads, straight shots, paved highways, unpaved-one-lane highways, road construction without warning, potholes, traffic, times when there was no one else coming or going for upwards of an hour. Riding in Vietnam is unlike riding anywhere else in the world. For such a small country, being about the size of New Mexico, it packs a lot of variety. The scenery can change as fast as from one mile to the next.

Riding in Vietnam has been a once in a life time kind of experience. Even if we did it again, it wouldn't be the same as the first time. 

Some may say what we deal with on a daily basis here is nuts! Buses passing on blind curves, people turning corners without looking, and potholes large enough to swallow a motorcycle whole! But we tell ourselves nearly every day how fortunate we are to be doing what we're doing. We may not be living the dream, but we're living our dream.

Back on the Horse: Mankato & Short Round Take on Vietnam

We’ve all heard the expression about “getting back on that horse” after being thrown off. I’m not sure how many of you have ever been thrown from a horse, but I can tell you that dusting yourself off and getting back on is easier said than done. But one thing that a good Midwestern upbringing full of horseback riding, sports, and summer vacations spent getting scraps outside instead of virtual blood-letting in a video game has taught us is that getting knocked down may hurt now, but the sting of not getting back up sticks around much longer.

Our mission, (and yes, we chose to accept it) was to come to Vietnam, buy motorcycles, and ride through the country at our leisure and pace. We spent a few days in Hanoi looking for bikes, finally found some, had them looked over at a mechanic (who ripped us off big time) and a week after arriving in Vietnam, we were ready to embark on our newest adventure. So here we are, the proud owners of very used, slightly abused, year unknown, Honda Win100 motorcycles: please meet Mankato and Short Round.

4:30am, ready to go.

Mankato, front and Short Round, back

After what I shared with you about Hanoi and its traffic, it’s easy to deduce that we weren’t excited about riding the bikes there (there are limits to the drive that the “get back on that horse” mentality will take a person to). So we woke extremely early (3:30am) to be packed, fed, checked-out, and ready to get on the bikes at 4:30am before the traffic got going. We planned out our route out of town the night before (seemed easy enough, only two turns in a non-grided city) so that we could hopefully make it out of the city before traffic picked and so that we could keep from getting unfortunately separated. Only one wrong turn and a few issues getting the bikes started (and into neutral) and we made it out of town just as the sun was coming up. It was a success.

The first two days of riding were not exactly what we expected. The traffic while riding was much less than what we experienced in Hanoi walking around, but it was still stressful and kept us on edge. On high alert. The roads were less than quality. In fact, it felt at some points as though we should be on dirt bikes on a racetrack, not motorcycles on a “paved” road. But the third day. The third day is why we wanted to get bikes in Vietnam in the first place. The scenery was beautiful, the traffic was very light to non-existent at times, and the roads were some of the highest quality we’d come across thus far. It was relaxing and peaceful and totally enjoyable. That third day (two days ago) was the reward that we’d never have experienced if we’d never gotten back on a motorbike again.

only a fraction of the beautiful scenery we saw on day 3

We decided to take advantage of the distance we’d made and the location we’d made it to on that third day, so we stayed here two nights instead of one. The city (Son La) isn’t wonderful by any means, but the hotel is nice enough and complete with internet and HBO. This gives us a chance to rest, to update, and to savor that third day. We’re hoping that there are more days like that third day and that there are few troubles and no serious issues along the way. If there are, then we’ll sell the bikes and call it a success. We got back on that horse. If we stop riding now, it will be on our own accord, not because of the fear that we could have let grow and take over from our accident in Korea.

So to our parents, who are probably on the verge of an aneurism, heart attack, or at the very least an ulcer at the very thought of us back on two-wheeled motor vehicles, know that it was our fine upbringing, thanks to you, that has instilled us with this “get back up and get back on” mentality. You have no one to blame but yourselves. J But seriously, thank you for raising us to be stronger than the fear that keeps so many people from trying again. 

Out of Hanoi and a beautiful sunrise

The boys, the sunrise, and the early risers

the boys at the Vietnamese equivalent of a rest stop

The view from said rest stop

Goodbye China. Good Morning Vietnam!

Health Report: It’s been about 2 weeks since I came down with the sickness (insert Disturbed’s “ooo wah, ah, ah, aaah!” here) that we finally decided was most likely hand, foot, and mouth disease; a common illness in China. More than 1.5 million people reported getting it in China in July when there was a huge outbreak. Luckily for me (and all of those 1.5 million too) it’s much like the flu so any long term effects or repetition is unlikely.

Status Report: It’s been just over a week since we left Yangshuo and began our journey to Vietnam. We had to stay the night in Nanning and take a bus from there to the boarder, and then in to Hanoi. Upon arriving in Vietnam we decided we liked it MUCH better than China. Despite the fact that we got ripped off by our taxi to our hotel (every time he honked the horn the meter shot up, and there was a lot of traffic and honking), had to pay extra at our hotel, and had to move to their sister hotel a few blocks away. But we did get to eat some really good food, finally. Because we had eaten street noodles for lunch and dinner for about three weeks straight and we were in need of something DIFFERENT!

And different is what we got. Not just for food. Hanoi is different than any big city in China and SO different from any place in the US. The first two days of going out walking around for food, we got totally turned around and lost (but finally found our way back), nearly got clipped by a few scooters, and were on such high alert looking at traffic, other pedestrians, the shops, and the street signs that we were actually physically as well as mentally exhausted when we got back to the room (see pictures below and you will understand what I'm talking about)! To say there's a lot to take in here in Hanoi, would be an understatement. So let me try to describe it for you.

Hanoi in five words or less: fairly westernized, organized chaos. Now, to expand on that. I haven’t seen a squatty potty yet (western toilets complete with paper abound!!). The language is somewhat similar to French and uses Roman characters, so we can “read” or at least recognize words. The city is not set up on any sort of a grid, whatsoever. And the traffic. Oh the traffic. There are very few cars, more of them are taxis than not, and there are even fewer buses. Instead, the preferred mode of transport is a bit more stream-lined.

Whether it is a bicycle, motor-bike, scooter, or motorcycle, these two-wheeled vehicles move like flocks of birds or schools of fish through the narrow, crowded streets. They move with great speed, often side by side with a fellow traveler, carrying on a conversation at times, and entering intersections and rounding corners without so much as a glance left or right. But like a school of fish or a flock of birds, they move as a unit. They will envelop a new two-wheeler into the flow when it turns into the lane and, just as seamlessly, the whole lot will slow, then split around an obstacle and reconvene on the other side if anything comes into its path. **As a pedestrian, you can walk out into the street, looking straight ahead or down, and just keep walking. They will all move around you. Just don’t make any sudden moves or stop dead in your tracks and you’ll be fine.** It is both awe-inspiring and terrifying at the same time. It’s amazing, really. Organized chaos. 

There are stoplights at occasional street corners, but they seem like more of a suggestion than a rule. And I don’t think I ever saw a single speed limit sign in the city. The only rule seems to be that on scooters and motorcycles, drivers and passengers should wear helmets. Which is nice to see, until you realize that the helmets they have on offer little more protection than a bicycle helmet would for someone on a scooter or motorcycle. At least it's good in theory. I can count on one hand the number of Chinese I saw wearing helmets... 

So Vietnam (or more correctly, Hanoi) has so far offered us a lot of good (and different) food at relatively cheap prices, a really nice hotel with free, fantastic breakfast every morning, with a wonderfully helpful staff, and English channels on the TV, intense traffic and seemingly constant scams and people looking to rip us off, and maybe most importantly, a nice and welcome change from the last two months in China. 

But good or bad, highs or lows, Hanoi (and Vietnam) is now the stage, the location, for our mission...But that’s to come in the next update.

View from our balcony in Yangshuo

From the roof of our hotel

limestone karsts and the Li River

Happily on our way to Nanning

On the bus from Nanning to Hanoi, Vietnam, just after the boarder crossing

Typical intersection in Hanoi

Got a bus, a taxi, and a (few) scooter(s)

Hanoi: it's a lot to take in

Traffic by night (with a cool structure in the background that we never did figure out what it was)

cute but cheeky little bugger

McDonald's (gross) with Extra Catch-up

Boy. Change is right. But it wasn’t what you or we were expecting. The first change came as more of a reversion. And a revision. I mean these in all the ways they could possibly be taken. As in going back, returning to a previous way, a rewrite, and looking at or seeing things again.

A month of planned, organized, and structured life just didn’t pan out for us. Something about it all just didn’t sit right with either of us. So we left the tai qi school the day after we arrived. There’s the reversion (to our familiar, unplanned ways). We left because of the aforementioned reasons, but mostly, we left because we CAN. That’s the revision. A revision of our planned month. But also, in the process, seeing our travel here in China as what we had originally seen it as. Freedom. Instead of what it had become. A checklist. Something to try to get some sort of satisfaction out of completing, as the items themselves weren’t bringing us infinite joy.

So we returned to Zenzhou, (which we feel to be the busiest, most polluted city we visited in China. Though this award somehow went to a previously visited, less dirty city.), where we would impatiently wait for four days for our last Chinese overnight train to take us away. That’s right. I said our last Chinese train. We had decided. We’re leaving China. And not to restart our 90-day stay time on our visa. Nope. We’re just plain old leaving. Our destination? Yangshuo. Which would prove both wise and foolhardy upon our arrival.

To say it’s a tourist stop is an understatement. To optimistically have hoped that the guidebooks were overstating its popularity with tourists was a mistake. In fact, if anything, its popularity as a tourist/expat/foreigner hotspot is not fully comprehendible by text alone. But the scenery is beautiful. And the room we found is pretty great. This all just adds up to two disenchanted, disheartened travelers only becoming more fully entrenched in their discontent than was possibly imagined. So what did we decide to do? Pay for a room, nearly upfront, for an additional two weeks. Just to pour some salt in the wound.

The food is overpriced, the tourists keep coming in droves, there’s tons of useless crap for sale by tons of people shouting “hello, hello!” at every white face that walks past, the nature (though beautiful) is being sold at top dollar to the hordes of onlookers who have come to take in the sights, and here we sit, on our fourth floor balcony, trying to escape from it all and remind ourselves that we’ll be leaving soon. We’ve become so malnourished the past two months on street-noodle carbohydrate only diets that the McDonald’s here has come to serve as the only reasonable (in price and function, not in true belief) source of a hunk of protein. We’ve sadly eaten there more in the past week than in the past month, and more in the past two months than in the past few years combined. We’re on a downward spiral…and it only gets worse from here. Hold on.

We sent our passports off to get visas for Vietnam and received them back in short order. But still, we wait here. We enjoy what we can of where we are. We run or workout daily, eat breakfast on the balcony and talk for hours about any and everything, watch movies, look up information on where we might be headed next. All this until it happens. Until we leave. Or until I fall ill. Which happened to come first. This, perhaps is the wise part of staying here—now we have time and a place for me to be ill. Or perhaps I am ill because I am here…that is to be discerned at a time other than the present however.

It would seem that the high degree of love I have for the Asian countries that I have stayed in longer than a few days or weeks is echoed back to me in equal proportion by said countries in a final parting gift of anti-health. From Korea, a head-cold worse than any I’ve ever had in my life. From China? Well, that’s the thing…we’re not entirely sure what China’s given me.

I was nearly incapacitated by the collection of issues dealt me first: a terrible headache like I’ve never had before, an intensely stiff neck, and all the major joints of my body, including all those of my spine, aching as if I had the most horrendous bout of the flu imaginable. These all grossly overshadowed the sore throat, so it is mentioned last. All these aliments were so intense that it made sleep nearly impossible. But somehow, when I awoke the next day, the joint aches had subsided, the headache had dulled, but the sore throat still lingered strong. Fast-forward to day three. The sore throat remains, but the headache is finally gone. Instead, I now have tiny, blister-like bumps on my hands, feet, and nose, and I begin to break out in a rash on 95% of the remaining amount of my body. After a near-anxiety attack and three Benadryl tablets, two muscle relaxers, and some Tylenol, I finally sleep.

We assume that the rash was hives, though they weren’t as incessantly itchy as most report them to be so who knows for sure, but it was all but gone, with just a faint trace, in the morning of the fourth day of me being ill. Along with the hives/rash went the sore throat, thankfully, as that has plagued me for days. So now, after four days of unexplainable illness, I am left with these tiny, little blister-like bumps all over my hands, feet, and nose. I literally feel as though I have leprosy, and Steve has joked of leaving me on a deserted island somewhere. It seems like more and more of a viable option as the hours creep on. As long as it’s not an island somewhere in Asia, as I think it would surely kill me at this rate.

So here I sit. Befuddled and totally at a loss. On every subject that seems relevant right now: what do I have? What happens next? Where do we go? Do we go? When do we go if we go at all? And the list of questions goes on. But the list of answers is nearly blank. “I don’t know” seems to be on repeat.

We’ve spent a lot of time the last two weeks talking and not doing much, but doing enough to keep us occupied. The last few days, we’ve done nothing but be sick or care for someone sick, which means we’ve both done a lot of thinking…and you know where that can lead someone such as ourselves. So right now, we’re just trying to keep a level head about us and not make any rash decisions (yes, full pun intended).

Our room is paid up until the morning of the 1^st of November and we have 90-day visas for Vietnam in our passports. How I will be come Friday is anyone’s guess. And what we decide to do for sure…well, that too could be more accurately answered by a magic eight ball than me at the moment.

So looks like we’re back to doing things the way we always do: last minute and without much of a plan or forethought. Fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants I think is what most would call it. Well, we’ve been pretty good pilots so far. We’ll see where it lands us 

Shanghai and Some Change

Though we were sad to leave all the wonderful aspects of Grandma’s house, we opted to leave Friday with a free ride back to Shanghai rather than to stay a few more days and then have to pay for a bus back to Shanghai later. We had managed to secure train tickets for four days after we arrived, as well as places to stay, given that it was still the holiday, and we didn’t have internet at Grandma’s.

After arriving in Shanghai, we managed to remember what line our hotel was on so that we could be dropped off by a subway station for that line. Then we miraculously remembered the stop that we would need to get off on. We even guessed the correct exit and made it to our hotel and checked in with no trouble. This seemed like a huge accomplishment for us, given the trouble we’ve had with some of these aspects in previous cities thus far. We decided that since it was still early that we’d find some dinner, then find our hostel that we’d have to move to the next day. All this accomplished before 9:30pm so we could walk around at our leisure checking out the river-walk where we would be running for the next few days and even buy some fruit for breakfast the next morning!

The remainder of the time in Shanghai was spent fighting with the hidden ISP service and the internet and the blog, trying to send emails, eating some of our favorite street food, and running. There was also a hefty amount of thinking done.

As I said, we have train tickets leaving Shanghai and heading to Zhengzhou on the 9^th. We are heading there to begin the process of learning tai qi. We will spend a month at a school learning and then practicing our new skills. We will spend about 7 hours a day training, 6 days a week. This much is planned. This much is certain. This much is a first for us. We haven’t had more than a day’s worth of plans ahead of us since we left. Now we have a whole month’s worth!

Trying this change on for size, some of the thinking that’s been done lately is along the lines of trying on some other changes. Some such changes include a change of country after we finish tai qi—and not just to restart our 90 days in China. Another is a change to this blog, or rather I should say, how we are blogging. But this will be revealed in the coming days. So stay tuned folks, we’ve got some exciting things on the horizon.

What Happens When There's No TV...

What we had hoped would be about 2 weeks of WWOOFing looks more like 6 days. But we’re happy with whatever time we get, as this wasn’t what we expected at all. We had in mind that we’d be helping with some manual labor, cleaning, maybe repairing a few things. Instead, we have been asked to do little to nothing in exchange for a place to sleep, delicious home-cooked food, and extreme kindness.

We realized shortly after our arrival that the family had no real intention of having us work. They were only interested in sharing their space with us, making sure we had more than enough food to eat, and relaxing. And they expected us to do the same. So we have slept in. We have read books. We have eaten three square meals a day. We sit by a fire every night, joined by the old couple who also live in the compound (I will call it this as it has a wall surrounding the entire premises), and we listen to them talk. Occasionally Li Qiao (the man who accepted our request to come wwoof with them) will explain to us what they are speaking about, but usually we just listen and watch the fire.

There’s no TV here. I haven’t heard a radio. All laptops have been tucked away in bags for days, to be replaced by books for leisure reading instead. There are ipods, but the only one with buds sunk deep in her ears with any regularity is Li Ling, the 13 year old. Even the ringing of cell phones has all but ceased here. It’s nice. It’s removed. It’s slow and comfortable and reminds me of a time, not all that long ago, when we all once survived without a steady barrage of electronically induced stimuli.

Our days consist of doing some light chores around the compound, eating, and sitting. Steve and I have gotten a few runs in together, which has been nice for so many reasons. The scenery is calming and lovely in the early shades of dusk while we trot along, trying to remind our bodies of what it once was like not so long ago, before the accident, when we moved with regularity.

Our evenings consist of sitting down to dinner, then sitting around a fire. We pull chairs around the old metal bowl in the center of the bricked courtyard and we sit. And they talk. And they laugh. And we listen. We watch the fire and we listen. Sometimes we are included, but mostly we listen.  All members of the family are present and at some point in the evening the old couple who help tend the compound also come to join.

I like this so much because it reminds me that not all family time has to be centered around a TV or an event. It can rather be something as simple as a fire in the courtyard to keep the mosquitoes away that brings everyone together. There is tea to be sipped, and sometimes, homemade fruit wine, and cigarettes are handed out freely to all that want them.

Topics of conversation have included such things as who is the father of the baby bunnies, tales of grandma’s favorite cock that was murdered, herbal medicines, bats, and what blood type attracts mosquitoes the most. These are the things that matter here with no TV or computers to relate the outside world news, which would mean little to nothing here anyway. Who so and so is dating or what the president did today just isn’t a factor in life here. And that’s something that I treasure about my time here. Something that I will miss once we’re gone.

We leave Friday, back to Shanghai. Friday will come too soon. This has been for sure an unusual WWOOFing experience in the sense of what WWOOFing is supposed to be. But it’s one that I cannot imagine altering in any way. What incredibly special people to open their home to us over their holiday time and let us into their slow and unusual life. What a special gift indeed, when one can be reminded of some of the things that happen when there is no TV.

The duck, the turtle, and the domesticate

Tea time

Tools of work

L-R: LiBo, LiLing, Grandma, me, Steve, LiQiao, & J

Grandma's room/kitchen area

part of Grandma's house/garden

Grandma at work, despite having just had heart issues. She's a firecracker!

Abandonded building behind the old school on the proper

Part of the old buildings of the school behind th

To Grandma's House We Go: A Tale of WWOOFing

We finally decided that staying with anyone and doing some WWOOFing (in case you are not familiar with WWOOFing, it is a worldwide organization that allows travelers to go and stay on farms for free, where, in return, the travelers help work on the farm) was probably our best bet for the holiday, so Steve sent out emails trying to contact as many wwoofers near Shanghai as possible. Two wrote back. We decided on the first person who contacted us and made plans to meet up. We were to meet his brother (who supposedly did not speak any English, only Chinese and Japanese) at his apartment at 6am on Sunday.

We wearily drug ourselves out of bed at 4:30 and made our way out to the street to get a taxi. After 10 mins of waiting, we were whisked away on what was said to be a 30 min trip. It only took just over 10. We arrived at our designated location at 5:40am and waited. And waited. And waited. We finally showed someone the address we had on our little piece of paper to confirm we really were in the correct location. He nodded that we were, but we just needed to go down a few buildings from where we had been standing. We did and found it with no trouble.

We were welcomed in by a friendly man, Li Bo, and quickly offered a seat and something to drink. We were informed that we were waiting for the last person in our party, that she’d be there soon and we’d be on our way.  An hour after we arrived at the apartment complex, we were a complete party of five (Li Bo, his daughter Li Ling, ourselves, and J), and were on our way.

What was to be a three our drive turned into a 5 hour journey due to traffic, pit stops, and the alarmingly slow rate of velocity with which we traveled 96% of the time (despite our vehicle never leaving the fast lane for more than a few moments at a time).  But our company was kind and there was no smoking in the car. We arrived at the small village, parked, and walked around for a bit.

Everyone in the village knows everyone else (needless to say, we stood out) so it’s not uncommon for people to just wander into other people’s courtyards and homes, just to take a peak around or to say hello. So that’s exactly what we did. We walked down narrow streets and side alleys and peered into courtyards and sitting areas. We saw people at work repairing old structures, building new ones, and a man weaving a basket from bamboo.

“Everyone wants new,” we were informed. Rather than repairing, most people just tear it down and build one of the new, shiny buildings. Though beautiful in their own way, these new buildings overshadow the authenticity of the antique structures, replacing character and history. I truly felt my heart sink at the sight of out with the old, in with the new.

To couple this mentality, we were also told that “no young men in the village. They all go off to city to make the money.” So it was then no surprise that everyone we encountered, at work or at rest, was much older than us. Many of these people are more suitable for village life. They cannot read or write; only work. TV’s, cell phones, and subways are overwhelming and confusing. The slow, steady life of the village is comfortable, and is home.

And now, here we are, smack dab in the middle of this family’s home for the holidays. It is mid-autumn festival followed directly by Chinese Independence Day (yes, I realize the oxymoron there), and this family of four, plus two friends, plus countless neighbors, have invited us in to share this time with them. How truly fortunate we feel as we put our bags in our new room and take in exactly where we are. Nestled in a little old village amongst mountains covered in bamboo trees, we are happy to have found a place such as this to spend the holidays.