Our First Travel Experience in China

We experienced our first travel experience in China this past week. Traveling in China is very cheap, but also difficult. We traveled to Yichang by bus and then took a boat ride on the Yangtze River. It was a great experience and was a well needed break. When you travel in China, you should be ready for anything. One of our phrases we remember is, Be fascinated not frustrated. Many things happen and you do not always know what is going on, but that makes for a bigger adventure.

We took our first long distance bus ride to Yichang. We left at 4:30 p.m. and arrived at 4:00 a.m. If you come to China, you have to experience a bus ride to get a cultural experience. I will never complain of Arkansas rest stops again! Most of the bathrooms are sheds with holes in the ground. Needless to say I drank no water the whole trip because I didn’t want to use the bathroom.

We traveled to Yichang to see 3 other teachers and to get on the boat. Yichang is a beautiful city and has western food. The city has 4 million people and is the biggest city in the Hubei province. I had a McDonalds cheeseburger and fries and it was wonderful. We also ate at Pizza Hut and had Hawaiian pizza with Parmesan cheese and Craig had some yummy greasy pepperoni pizza. While we were eating, a little boy was staring at us and got to close and hit his head on the glass. I don’t think he hurt himself but it was hilarious and he was very embarrassed. And the best part of all was I had cheesecake. To you that may sound small, but Enshi has no dairy products so cheesecake is out of the question. We were also able to get butter so now I can bake! We went to a cool coffee shop close to the 3 Gorges University. Craig got to visit with owner and look at all of his pictures. He loves the outdoors and has a group of people that travel around China and do adventure sports. It was one of the coolest coffee shops I have ever seen.

We got on the boat on Tuesday morning in Yichang. The boat ride went from Yichang to Badong and then back to Yichang. We had a great time on the boat. The views were some of the most beautiful creation I have ever seen. We have put more pictures on our picture website, but the pictures do not do the area justice. We had 5 stops during our 3 day trip. All of the stops were very interesting. Two of our stops were at 6:00 in the morning. On the first stop, Jess and I were the only two to get off. We took a ferry ride through the Lesser of the Three Gorges and then took a small wooden boat. It was a four hour ride but it was my favorite part of the trip. We also stopped at the 3 Gorges Dam. Nate and Craig enjoyed this stop. Another favorite part of the trip was we got to watch a traditional folk dance and music show. It was incredible! The pictures are the best way to describe our trip. It was amazing to see his creation in a whole new way!

The bus ride home was horrible! It had rained the whole day before so the roads were bad. Our bus also leaked in two places. The best part was they gave a man an umbrella to use in the bus so it wouldn’t drip on him. Our legs would not fit in the seats so we had to find places to put our legs. It only took 10 hours but thank goodness for Dramamine so I could sleep.

The best feeling on our trip was missing Enshi. That made us feel good because we realized that we do like it here and we missed our Chinese home. The people in Enshi are so friendly and we are so happy that He put us here. Every time we are in another city, we are happy we are in Enshi. It may not be as big or have Western food, but it has so many other great things that make up for it.

We are excited to get back to work. We have more English readings this week and we are excited to get those started again. I started my Chinese tutoring last week. I have a lesson every Friday and I love my tutor. She is really funny and also patient with me which is a good thing because I am terrible at Chinese. A lot of doors have opened for us lately to get to know people and to share our lives with them. We are so thankful that we are here.

Continue to keep us in your thoughts as we are working here in China.