January and chinese adventure

okay so January saw the end of the first semester of teaching for me. after giving out some finals, making some grades, and talking to parents it was time for me to be on vacation for about 4 weeks. my first stop was zhangjiajie.

i went there because the two people i was traveling with lived there and it was one of their birthdays. we had a traditional chinese birthday. that is to say we have dinner with a cake full of fruit, then we went to a karaoke place and drank alot. that night it snowed and it was beautiful. the following day we went around town and i got see some cool sights.

 

later that day we left zhangjiajie for shenzhen and the airport in zhangjiajie was so small that there was no heat and our flight was delayed. but eventually we got to my favorite city in china, shenzhen. once we got to shenzhen it was 2am and we could not check into our hostel till 6am so we played cards in KFC till 6am. later that day we went to windows of the world

while at windows of the world i got to ride a camel.

and i got to shoot a bow and arrow. 

later that day we went to pizza hut where i got some escargot. it was actually pretty good. the next day we left to hong kong.

while there we went to see the world's largest Buddha.

after that we went to the highest place in hong kong and ate at bubba gumb shrimp.

the next we went to disneyland hong kong. 

later that night i wound up getting sick and throw up a bit. but the next day i felt better and we went to macau.

while there walked around to various casino and we saw 2 shows, one was a 15 sec show about the five dragon. the other one was of the greatest shows i have ever seen called the house of the dancing water.

later that day we were walking back to our hostel and i spotted this is the lobby of a hotel.

probably the coolest thing i have ever seen in a hotel lobby. the next day we left to go back to shenzhen and we eventually went to coco park and had some drinks on the metro there a chinese guy who spoke no english and was about 60 had the mortal kombat theme song as his ring tone. the next day we went on a 13 hour train ride to this beautiful city called Yongshou.

that day we walked around the town and i got some good shopping done for my family. one thing i got to do was hold a hawk.

the next day we took a tour of some famous caves.

later we got to take a mud bath then relax in a hot springs. it was so nice.

. after that we saw some cool sights and i had a monkey chilling on my shoulders.

the next couple of days i didn't do much because i was sick again. our next stop was in chengdu. while there we went to a Buddhist monastery. 

the next day we went to a chinese museum. 

the next day we did something freaken awesome. we held a panda!

the next day was the last day of vacation. we went to a park called people's park and it was nice. 

all in all it was a very fun vacation but truth be told i am looking forward to starting up class again. i have wonderful students and it should be an exciting second semester.