Wow! For all of you that have subscribed to by RSS feed you are probably excited by the fact that there is finally a new story. Of course there are also a bunch of new photos, like 170 to be exact. Also just for my own aggrandizement I have finally broken the 1000 picture plateau. Bully for me! You will also notice as you are flipping through the photos that they are all of Wudang Mountain. The keener will also notice that the photos were taken on two different days.I will get to those stories in just a second, because lets be honest that is why we are all here right. First I want to let you guys know that I should be returning to the U.S, just in time for the 4th of July. I am trying to purchase a plane ticket that will have me leaving here on July the first and arriving home on July the first, yay for the international date line. More details will be forthcoming as I get them.
Mt. Wudang is the most holy of all Taoist religious sites in China. It has an ancient city, palaces, and a temple complex built in some cases literally on the side of the mountain. So many Chinese people make the trip to see the mountain and pray at its many holy sites. Also it is considered appropriate to walk up the mountain. Of course there is a cable car though, which I was both excited and terrified off. As most of you know I am scared of heights; and not in the cute like oh he is scared of heights isn't that funny dear, but in like soul crushing weakness that prevents my body from doing what my brain is telling it to do. In what would become a cruel twist of fate, but at the time a fortuitous circumstance, the cable cars were broke and you could only walk up. At the time I was kind of glad the decision was taken out of my hands, but would of course later regret this frame of mind. By later I mean about 12,000 stairs later (btw that is just one way). You may think I am joking or am just overstating as I usually do, but in reality I am probably underselling the situation. I counted and I stopped around 3,00 stairs and we weren't even close to a quarter of the way done. It took me Finn, and Daniel Moss about 3 and half hours to climb Mt. Wudang. It is roughly a 10km round trip, plus you have to throw in like 2 km of straight up and down. My favorite part was were they would take you up and up and up and then you would go back down only to turn around and go up again. You could literally stand and see where you were going like 300 meters away directly in front of you but you had to go down and back up and then backwards and then down again and finally back up. It was the most aggravating thing ever. The reasoning being two-fold, number one you wasted a bunch of energy going in what feels like a circle and two you now know the way down will involve more walking up stairs and not just walking down stairs. Speaking of which, when you finally make it to the top you are excited. I mean it is terrifying because to me I feel like I am perched on this tiny mountain top and a stiff wind will blow me off. Then you are just excited to go down and in your mind your like this is going to be easy, wrong! Your quads and calves are so torn up from carry your fat butt up the mountain that ever step down the start quivering and threaten to collapse underneath you, while you are staring down staircases of 100 or more steps. Your knees start to hurt, your legs are cramping, and the steps. The steps are like a 1000 years old, literally. They were hand hewn out of solid rock and have had millions of people walking on them. They are slippery, misshapen, cracked,and narrow. In some places they are as shallow as 3 inches in others they are over a foot high, and they width can vary from a 3 inches to 7 inches. Measure your feet some time, that means you cant fit your foot on the steps. Of course near the bottom they have poured these lovely uniform concrete steps, but they only last for a third of the mountain or so. The best part of course is the next week were your legs are so blasted it takes you 20 minutes to walk up the measly 100 or so steps to your room. It was the most tired I have ever been in my life.
So two weeks later Finn had some friends coming in to town for the express purpose of climbing Mt. Wudang. So once again I found myself facing the prospect of climbing that horrible mountain. However in a stroke of genius I realized that there was so much more to see than just the top of the mountain. So in the first set of pictures you might see some shots of stuff far away that I never went to and in the second set you will see that I went to many different places. They are many things around the base of the hill we didn't get to see, because we sold out for the top. So the second day I spent the whole day walking around and looking at temples and palaces. I still did some serious walking but it was mostly flat except for one or two parts. So you will see a lot more variety in the second set of pictures than in the first. I am pretty sure I no longer feel the need to go back to that mountain again, however if you visit me don't be afraid the cable car will be fixed in 6 months!!
So that is it for stories no for some quick hits:
Finn and I are going to Xi'an this weekend to eat subway and pizza hut. Yes that is right a trip for the express purpose o eating Western food, mock me I don't care.
Bengals actually made some smart choices in the draft this year and so did the Raiders, I think the world has stopped spinning.
I have already been to a graduation party and graduation isn't for like another 2 months. You might be thinking oh cool a party, no, party means Chinese talent show. In Chinese.
Moss did visit me for a few days to climb Mt. Wudang and then he came to my classes for a day. He might have been the first black man in Shiyan, ever.
Casey isn't going to visit me because he is to busy doing his "Master's thesis" and planning to go to OSU next year to begin his PhD. program. Like that is more important that me.
For the Dan Jewett and Josh Bolling's of the world, I got facebooked by Brandon Hodges and Tim Combs. Weird. (btw i turned facebook into a verb)
I want to say something about Dan Jewett it has been like a month since he told me, but I am not sure if the cat is out of the bag yet. (he is a closet Steeler's fan...shsh)
Big Ben seriously, do better. Not funny now Steeler fans, when the shoe is on the other foot. Of course you just trade Holmes before his 6 week suspension.
I heard Baseball started again, wake me in September when the Yankees are in the Series.
My birthday is coming up so feel free to make all cash payments directly to me, just send me and e-mail I will give you the correct account information and routing numbers.
That is all I got, but I feel like I should go longer since I haven't written a story in a while but nothing exciting has happened to me recently so I got nothing. Unless you want to hear about me eating some fried rice for lunch, no, ok then see ya!
