Girls Trip!

A couple of weeks ago, I went on a girls' road trip with my China besties, Camille, Dawn and Watermelon. We decided to take a quick trip across Hubei province (a province is like a state in America). We traveled to Jingzhou to see some fellow Zhong Relations teachers and then continued to YiChang to see the Three Gorges Dam. 

When we got to the train station in Huangshi, we realized that all four of us were rocking our TOMs for the trip! I guess besties have a tendency to dress alike. 

Dawn and Watermelon enjoying some snacks on the train ride! The train to Jingzhou was about 5 hours. Camille and I have taken 17 hour trains before, so this was a piece of cake (Random fact: I just taught my students, today, that "a piece of cake" is an idiom that means something is easy!)

We made it to Mandi and Ryan's school in Jingzhou! Mandi and Ryan are fellow Zhong Relations teachers and Mandi is actually from Baton Rouge. She went to LSU at the same time as me, but we didn't meet until we were in China!

About to go to dinner together! Unfortunately, Mandi had to leave to go to Beijing the same night, so we only got to spend a few hours together!

That night we headed out to explore the city. Jingzhou is a really interesting city. It is very modern, but has a lot of history and even has remnants of the ancient city intact, including the city wall. 

We found the wall! 

And then we climbed the wall!

It was very pretty at night with all of the lights! 

The next morning we got up to explore more and to bike on the wall. On our walk back to the wall, we found this temple. The weather was so wonderful, I wish we could have spent more than one day there!

A four person bike! Sounds like a great idea, right?

An attempted selfie on the bike! The four person bike was super fun, but it turned out to be really heavy and hard to pedal. We almost took out a few people and maybe a dog! We only lasted an hour!

After biking, we headed over to the museum. Dawn was really excited about it!

This is a porcelain pillow!!!!! Now, who wouldn't want to sleep on that?

Camille admiring some of the ancient vases!

This is an ear cup. There were many at the museum and I still don't know what they were used for!

This is the main attraction; a perfectly preserved man from 167 BC. The boxes on the left are his insides. Its hard to see, but the top left box is his brain! It was slightly gross, but its amazing how perfectly preserved he his. The preservation happened naturally and there are a few different theories as to how it did.

We asked some Chinese tourists to take a photo for us at the museum. This picture is how Camille and I chose to pose. 

This picture is how the Chinese tourists told us to pose! Win!

Outside the museum was this woman, making animal sculptures out of sugar that you can eat. Dawn was so excited to get one, because she used to get these when she was a child. 

She got a monkey!

After this, we took another train to YiChang which was only for 30 

minutes. In YiChang, Camille and I found a McDonald's and it was the happiest moment of my day! If you really know me, then you know that normally, in America, I wouldn't go anywhere near McDonald's. But in China, desperate times call for desperate measures! And my cheeseburger was delicious!!!

We met up with one of Watermelon's classmates for dinner that night and they ordered hot pot. Hot pot is where they place a pot of broth on a hot plate at your table and you order a lot of other things like meat and vegetables and then you cook it yourself. Hot pot is one of my favorite things here, but I had just eaten McDonald's so I was too full to eat more!

It turns out I didn't mind being full, because they ordered cow stomach....

And duck intestines resting in a pool of blood! Blah! I've tried a small piece of cow stomach before and it mostly taste like beef, but very chewy. I will never eat it again! I hope I've never tried duck intestines before, but when its cooked, it looks a lot like noodles, so I'm afraid I might have eaten it without knowing! 

And finally, we made it to the Three Gorges Dam. We rode up a series of escalators to the top of the mountain to get a good view of the dam. 

Here we go!

Three Gorges Dam! It is the largest hydroelectric dam in the world and crosses the Yangtze River. 

Our attempted selfie in front of the dam!

Playing around!

Another view of the enormous dam.

Another great view. The dam is 594 feet tall and 7,661 feet long. The Yangtze River is the third largest river in the world. This is the same river that goes through my city, Huangshi. Camille and I couldn't get over how beautiful the water and sky was. In our city, the Yangtze river looks more like the Mississippi River, only add in some more pollution. Here it was simply gorgeous and the pictures don't do it justice! I couldn't believe I was still in China!

We're on a boat! This was my favorite part of the whole trip. We took a 3 hour cruise from Three Gorges Dam back to YiChang. The weather was perfect!

At the end of the cruise, the boat went through another dam. It was really cool to see how it worked. The ship stops in between two gates that lead to the river. While its in the middle, the water goes down. You can see in the picture, on the walls, where the water started. Once the water is low enough, the front gate opens and the ship moves on. 

It was cool, but also a little bit creepy when we were sandwiched in the middle! I felt trapped!

Our last train ride. After our quick trip, we headed back to Huangshi a little tired and a little sunburnt (well, Camille and I were sunburnt, oh white skin!). This was the last train ride that Camille and I will go on in China, so of course I had to get a picture! I've really enjoyed this way of travel and will miss it next year in America!