"Ayi, Welcome to China!"

Because of the New Year, all of China had Friday off. China doesn't really celebrate the calendar new year, but we do, so, we decided to treat ourselves to a New Years weekend getaway in Anhui Province to hike HuangShan (Yellow Mountain) and swim in hot springs! Anhui province is about a three hour bus ride from Lin'an, which is perfect because I love bus rides (train rides are my favorite but bus rides are a very close second!), especially in China! Because China is the weirdest combination of big city and little farm town (There is no real inbetween (well, I guess Lin'an is kind of like an inbetween because it has both city and farm on the same street but most places are either all city or all farm) and the change from city to farm is very abrupt. One minute you are stuck in traffic, seeing flashing neon lights and buildings at least 15 stories tall then the next minute you are seeing rice fields, hills covered in rows of tea and old fashioned houses (Chinese farming towns are the coolest! I would KILL to spend time teaching in one of them....I even picked out the one I would teach in. I don't know the actual name but it looks like a wonderful place to live!) there is so much to look at that bus rides that even three hour ones, fly by! (I hate the saying "life is about the journey and not about the destination" but when I'm on the bus, that's actually how I feel. especially when my destination is a day long hike.....)

When we arrived in Anhui, we took a bus to the town of Huangshan . Here, there are restaurants and hotels and stores all designed for the tourists who are coming to climb the mountain. (HuangShan is a big mountain range. Like BIG. And people come from everywhere to spend (often days) climbing it...It is also considered to be one of the most beautiful places in China...nbd) I knew it was going to be a hard hike but when we got to the town of Huangshan, we saw climbers coming down looking like they had been gone for weeks. They were bent over with their walking sticks dragging, wearing knee braces and special shoes and carrying GIANT backpacks. It was horrifying. We had known it was going to be cold so we had packed lots of layers. We had known it was going to be a long day so we had packed snacks and water in our hiking backpacks but seeing these people made me feel very unprepared. Then, when we were eating dinner at our hotel (Mr. Hu's Hotel and Restaurant....not your typical hotel but I give it 5 stars! Mostly because Mr. Hu was the nicest little Chinese man and they had the best coffee I've had since I left America...) we met a French couple who had just come off the mountain. They looked cold and exhausted and when we asked them about their hike they started talking about how they had planned a one day hike but had gotten stuck and had to sleep on a bench at one of the hotels in the mountain. They talked about how cold they were and how sore their legs were and how they never wanted to see stairs again (hiking in China is literally just walking up and down stone staircases for hours). So, when we woke up at 5:45 on Saturday, I can't really say that I was looking forward to the day ahead because....I'm not exactly a hiking superfan and everything that I had seen the day before made me think that it was going to be quite the day(or possibly days...). Which is why I was very confused when we got to the entrance of the mountain. At the entrance there were many of the people like we had seen before, all decked out in hiking gear ready for anything, but there were also guys in sports coats and loafers, girls in skirts, families with small children and some parents who were carrying their too-young-to-walk babies in their arms - I no longer had any idea of just what was waiting for me on this mountain.

After we bought our tickets, we got on the cable car that was going to take us to the starting point of the hike. It was so COOL! I have never seen anything like it. There were mountains everywhere and when you looked out, it looked like you were looking into the sea but it was all just sky (which is probably why they call it "the sea of clouds"). Thankfully, it was so beautiful that when the cable car stopped and the woman on the intercom told me "not to panic", I could distract myself with the scenery until we started moving again (also, there was a nice Chinese man in the cable car with us who kept saying "no problem, no problem" so that helped me not to worry). When we got off, the hike was actually really nice! We walked up and down stairs between the peaks of the mountain and we climbed out on the rocky ledges to take pictures! And everywhere we went, we made friends! There was one family that we kept seeing over and over, so many times, in fact, that their son started calling us "ayi" or aunt. (Whenever he would spot us from afar he would yell "ayi! welcome to China!" )And so, we continued chatting with the people around us and merrily frolicking from peak to peak. We stopped and had peanut butter and jellys, we took selfies, we sang hiking songs, we were having a lovely time and then we found the Observatory. The Observatory was the reason that we came to this mountain. It was the goal my friends had set for the day. The Observatory is at the highest peak of HuangShan and, while it is VERY beautiful, it is also VERY high. So we climbed. And climbed. And climbed. And when we finally got to the top it was like nothing I have ever seen. It was gorgeous. We took so many pictures and none of them do it justice. It was incredible. But then we turned around to go home. And we climbed down. Until we got to all of those peaks that we had been frolicking over at the beginning. We had not been thinking about the fact that we would have to climb them again on the way back. Needless to say, we were no longer frolicking. We were trudging. Just as we were about to climb into the cable car to go back down, we saw three women being carried up the mountain in chariots. If only we had known that that was an option......

When our hike was over, we took a bus to the other side of the mountain where there is a natural hot spring and we went for a swim! It was wonderful! It was so warm and nice! All of the pools were filled with natural water from the spring but there were also pools that had green tea or coconut milk or red wine added to them that you could swim in! There was even a pool that was filled with these tiny little beads and you just kind of sunk into them and then every time you moved it was like a little massage. And there was an all you could eat fruit bar which meant endless applepears (which is all I have ever really wanted) and cherry tomatoes! There was also tea everywhere! I don't think there is a better way to spend an evening after a long day of hiking then by swimming in hot springs, drinking tea and eating pearapples! Happy New Year to us!

**Chinese kids typically call older people aunt or uncle. So, all of our friends with children have their kids call us aunts which is why it wasn't at all strange for the boy we met on the mountain to call us aunt. We usually try to get them to call us "jiejie" or older sister instead but they usually just laugh and

then keep saying aunt. **