Short Stories of a Silk Traveler

Well, I'm alive if anyone was wondering. I returned back to Beijing about 7:30 am yesterday and I've been doing a lot of work settling back into school. I begin classes tomorrow, but Chinese is my only class. Since tomorrow is the Mid-Autumn festival, our Chinese classes will be cancelled. That means a day off to start making a gigantic photo-fest for everyone. I think the last time I wrote was sometime in Xi'an, the day before we saw the Terracotta Warriors. The Warriors were amazing. The 8th Wonder of the World. I'll try and tell as much as I can in the captions when I post pictures. Xi'an also has a great Muslim street that was a lot of fun to go down. It had plenty of places to eat and tons of vendors selling stuff. We saw a Taoist temple near Xi'an that was absolutely 100% the picture of China. It was located in the mountains and there was fog that surrounded the lower parts of the mountains. The peaks slowly faded into the fog the further away they became and the temple was on top of a mountain side. Straight out of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, I'd say. We walked through a local village to Big Goose Pagoda and on the way back to Xi'an we went to Old Qin Palace (replica). The day we went to Luoyang we went to see the Small Goose Pagoda in the city of Xi'an.
In Luoyang, we spent most of our time exploring the town. Playing Xiangxi (Chinese Chess) with the locals, finding new restaurants, and of course going out and having a good time at night. One night, Jeff, Dan, Ryan and I spent nearly 2 hours with this Muslim family in Luoyang. They had two children (probably cousins) and we ate cheap noodles and played with them. They even had a "Panda" bunny that was no bigger than my hand. That's the abbreviated version but it was a very memorable experience. In Luoyang, we went to the Shaolin Temple, where Kongfu began. We saw students break metal sticks on their heads, throw nails through glass, do Mushu animal interpretations, sword fighting and other awesome stuff. Also, we saw the nearby Pagoda Forest made up of several dozen stone pagodas. The Shaolin Temple is also a Zen Buddhist temple, and we walked through the temple looking at monks and seeing the Buddhas. On the way home, we went to the Longmen Grottoes. These are very famous caves, similar to Mogao Caves that have thousands of Buddha statues and paintings. The Longmen Grottoes have over 2300 caves and over 100,000 Buddhas ranging from centimeters high to about 30m.
From Luoyang we took a flight to Hohhot, our final destination. Of course, because of my last name and my general luck, I was one of 12 people that didn't make it on the direct flight in Hohhot. I was lucky enough to wake up a half-hour earlier (6:30 am), have a 3 hour layover in Beijing, then arrive 3 hours later than everyone an hour before dinnertime. The flight from Beijing was delayed 40 minutes, but I didn't notice because I had already fallen asleep while we were waiting on the runway. The hotel in Hohhot was amazing. It had mineral springs and massages in the hotel. Everyone got a massage and about 6 or 7 of us guys got a massage. Naturally, not being massage connoisseurs, we didn't know NOT to have the women take glasses, light a cotton ball underneath them to remove the air, and put them on our backs. The result is 10 huge circles that are red from the suction. I have pictures that will help explain.
From Hohhot, which is located in the Autonomous Region of Inner Mongolia, we went to the Mongolian Grasslands to finish our trip by staying with the Mongols in their traditional nomadic homes called gers. Gers are round huts and our gers were a bit modernized. They had beds, bath, and even a TV. Not saying it was much, there was no heat and the water was almost a trickle. In the grasslands, you'll see in the pictures, there isn't much to do. Within 250 miles. Of the things to do, there are two that would be considered fun to 20 year olds and that was horseback riding and ATVing. The horses were "strictly forbidden" and there were about 8 ATVs. The ATVs were Y150 for an hour and a half. The hour and a half was following a Mongol on a "Grasslands Tour." Whatever that meant it sounded restrictive and boring so we decided to break the rules and ride the horses instead. We asked our leader what would happen (before we rode horses) if "hypothetically" a group of us went horseback riding. She frankly said, "Nothing." So we told her to turn around and pretend we had never talked and next thing I knew I was riding my first horse in the Mongolian Grasslands. We went for two hours to the "lake," aka big puddle with cows. Great time. Really sore after. Really really sore. We had a roast lamb dinner (you'll see pictures) and finished the night with a Mongolian dance party. Not what you would think though, they listen to techno music so it was pretty much like a high school dance party. Except outside in the cold under the stars. The sunrise wasn't as great as the Gobi and when we left the grasslands we went back to Hohhot for the day. TBC wouldn't let us rest there though, we had a museum trip and 8 hours of free time to do whatever. We took an overnight train and here I am.
That was the brief version of my past 5 days. It was a trip of a lifetime but now I'm getting ready to start classes and get into a routine. We all joined a nearby gym for Y500 for 3-months. Not bad and I feel great already after working out for two days. Expect a whole lot of pictures and some really great posts in the coming days. I have a list of stories to tell and about 1000 pictures to share. (Not all of them mine)