I've been to the mountain top

Today Rebecca and I met up with two girls at the school to go climb a mountain just outside of town. They brought a bike along for Rebecca to use for the day and I got on mine and we all rode a few miles through town to the outskirts and came to the foot of the mountain. We parked our bikes and began walking up the nice concrete path all the way up the side of the mountain. It was a steep climb, but it was surprisingly short and fairly easy for the amount of distance we covered. At the top was a sort of park with a monument and some shops, and a great view of the whole city of Shuizhai. We walked down the other side and around on the road that leads to the peak. I will have to make more trips here, as it is very easy to access with a short bike ride. Too bad I don't have a bike with a granny gear to climb the hill - no way in hell am I pedaling my heavy single-speed up that mountain or coming down with its ancient rod brakes.

We found out friday that this weekend is a 3-day weekend for us and the grade 1 and 2 students - apparently its the Qingming /The Clear & Bright Festival that occurs on April 5th. We don't teach classes monday, so we are considering another visit to Meizhou that day.

Walking through the city tonight we decided to stop by the calligraphy artist's shop that I visited by myself the other day. We walked in and he served us tea and talked some. I don't know how we do it, we only speak a spoonful of Chinese and he spoke no English, but somehow we still had a conversation of sorts. Eventually he got out the calligraphy gear and let us take a shot at it. I know how to write some Chinese characters, so I did what I could and did a decent job at it. I went over to buy a brush but he refused to let me pay for it, giving it as a gift. Plus I guess it was sort of 'broken' since the brush was fluffy and not sharp - I guess it needs to be sharp to do caligraphy properly. Pretty awesome though, since I was planning on using it as a gift anyway.

Here are some pictures from the day

Overlooking Shuizhai


On the other side



Terraced rice paddies