Yep, okay, fell way behind again.  Anyways I'll dive right into it.  2 weeks ago February 18th, Isabella rounded up the crew to take us on an excursion to Xing Ping.  A small town near where the imagery on the of the 20¥ bill.  I took the requisite picture at the spot so I will post that soon once I figure out what to do with my photos (my HD is nearly full).  But before we got to Xing Ping we stopped at a very small village where many of the traditional Chinese scroll paintings and fans that you see at the shops in Yangshuo are made.  So we strolled through there for a bit, looking at various artists work.  So, from there we continue on to Xing Ping and board one of the river rafts.  Now, they advertise that the rafts are "bamboo rafts" but the bamboo they use is an odd white color that is really slippery when wet.  I've never seen it in nature.  So we embark on our tour and its a pretty chilly day and we're riding up stream on a boat thats powered by a motor cycle engine with an extended sort of driveshaft with a propeller on the end.  It was a pretty fun ride, and cool to see the karst formations rise straight out of the water.  I took quite a few pictures from here.  It was funny for us because like usual we were as much of an attraction to the chinese tourists as the scenery. At the turn around point there was a formation where supposedly there are 9 horses hidden in the rocks.  I think I found three or four.  More of a mind game than anything.  After the boat cruise we drove back to Yangshuo and that was pretty much the day.

The next day was a pretty low key day.  The group just hung out at the school until about 1 or so when I decided to go running.  The others were going to go to mimosas to use the internet because it was down at the school as usual.  So I went for my longest run so far in China 70 minutes.  When I returned nobody had left for mimosas because apparently tom broke the washing machine drain while it was draining and flooded his bathroom.  Smooth.  After that we went to mimosas and took it easy.

Sunday.  At brunch Isabella asked if we would like to go on a bike ride to Moon Hill.  Moon Hill, being one of the biggest attractions in Yangshou couldn't be one to miss out on.  So Isabella pulls out several bikes that the school owns.  The bikes were no race bikes by any means but it got the job done.  I think I made Amelia have a heart attack by the amount of time I would ride no-handed (about 75 percent of the ride).  Anyways on the ride Tom was being his usual self saying "Ni Hao" to every chinese person he saw and saying "Dui" to everything said to him.  Then somebody made the grave mistake of telling him how to say "I love you" which he then proceeded to start saying to every girl he saw.  Other than Tom making a bunch of friends the bike ride was nice.  It was a really nice sunny day which seemed to happen every weekend in Yangshuo, good timing weather.  So on our ride we made our first stop at "The Big Banyan Tree".  The tree is exactly what it says.  A 1400 year old Banyan tree.  It was cool to see that parts of the branches had reached the ground and made new roots so it looked like a tree with multiple trunks.  So we did the usual thing, walked around it three times for good luck.  After looking at the tree we went over to the little market.  There was a guy with three monkeys tethered to a little stand that you could pay to get your picture taken with.  I didn't get my picture taken because I felt it was a cruel situation for the monkeys.  So I just took a picture of them.  After Banyan tree we continued on to Moon Hill.  We all were pretty hungry when we got there so we stopped at the over priced café at the bottom and got fried rice.  Once charged and ready to go we made our voyage up the 800 some steps to Moon Hill.  The climb isnt all that scenic because you're hiking up through a forest but once you get to the top there is a pretty impressive view.  On this day we ran into a group of climbers that we had seen around town, climbing up the under side of the formation.  Then we saw this guy pulling himself up the middle of the arch by his ropes.  They were trying to get as high as they can so they could backflips off of the hill.  It was pretty impressive to see.  The guys we talked to were a part of a group they made called "Organic Hobo"  Basically a group of guys going around the world seeing how sustainable food practices were being used.  Search for them online, I think they said they would post the backflip videos on their website.  So after spending about an hour at the top we make our way down and head home.  Pretty exhausting day.

The next couple of days were spent doing the regular training routine but we got more into actual teaching practices, then doing a demo teaching lesson amongst ourselves.  We gave each other a pretty hard time so that was pretty funny.  On thursday and friday we had to do a practice class with real live students, which increased the pressure.  For those classes we had a partner and we split time talking about our home countries.  Chinese kids know 6 things about america "Justin Beiber, Lady Gaga, NBA, Yao Ming, Kobe, and Obama".  So hopefully I filled their brains with a little more knowledge.

Another significant even that happened on thursday is fellow Centurians, Justin Bussies and Kei Mamiya came to visit!! This was really fun to see some good friends from college on the other side of the world (Kei is Japanese and Justin is teaching english in Japan).  Anyways, with my days occupied with teaching, Kei and Justin went around doing the tourist things, meeting up in the evenings.  So for their first night we decided to go out for a nice Chinese dinner.  We went to the same place Isabella always takes us so she called ahead for us to tell them we were coming and to give us a discount (which they actually gave to us, AWESOME!).  So after dinner, I showed them around town and went to Caviler Bar to teach them the dice game (our usual spot The Stone Rose closed to remodel...).  The next day (friday) was the same routine.  This time we met at the much cheaper Wontons restaurant but still had a great dinner.  On saturday Isabella informed me that a teacher at the school wanted to take the group on a bike ride on some new road.  Everyone again decided to join.  We started going out the direction non of us have ever been down which eventually lead to a very hilly road.  The biggest hill was over half a mile long.  So at the top of the hill everyone thought this route was too tough. I was slightly disappointed because I always like these types of challenges.  So we all turned around and everyone but Justin, Kei, The teacher and Me went back to school.  We then decided to go to Moon hill.  The teacher said he could show us a different more scenic route.  That sounded good so we went that way.  On the way we stopped at an aquaduct along the river.  Pretty cool spot. We continued to moon hill and got a much better view as we approached compared to the typical route.  This route also had a lot fewer cars and busses so that was nice as well.  We then hiked to the top, hung out for a bit, and them made our way down and back the same route.  I then saw Justin and Kei off at the long range bus station on the outside of town.  I then went back to Mimosas and found the crew there with Jarone and Weiss!  They were back for a few days from the orphanage before they took off to the Netherlands.  We then went out to tin tin bar and cavilers, it was a good time.

Okay I'll keep catching up.  Week behind still but I'll get it! Its 1:30 now and I have class at 9:35 I need to got to sleep!