I have returned safe and sound, home to the United States. The great news is that everyone has returned injury free and without any Chinese criminal record. Hurray! The trip was an amazing adventure and while throughout the trip I said “I am never coming back,” I find myself excited to return in the spring (hopefully). a bullet summary, cause I like bullet summaries.
- The Hiking was ridiculously more hard than I imagined, but still doable.
- The food in the cities and in the mountains was some of the best food I have ever had outside of the states.
- The people were incredibly nice and hospitable, to the point where I was disappointed in my own American culture.
- Our China contact was simultaneously the coolest person I have ever met and the most annoying. But he was okay with it cause he knew that China had made him ‘weird.’
- I got scared, more scared than I have ever been before.
- I had amazing fun, communicating in ways other than language.
- I was stretched, physically, emotionally, and spiritually.
- Hopefully we make it back in the Spring.
I will just tell one story for now. One the first day of our first hike we hiked from 9:00am to 7:00pm. And the first day was tough. Because we were still getting used to the altitude (above 8000 feet), we were winded the entire time while hiking. We could stop and catch our breath, but the speed at which you lost it again made it almost not worth it. At first, since it had been raining the day before) we hiked through mud that was just discouraging. Our boots became heavy and we all became covered, but eventually the Mud road ended and we picked up speed. In the afternoon we were followed for a while be a friend Chinese mountain farmer, but eventually we passed his house and he just sat down and watched us till we could not see him anymore. He tried to invite us in for tea, but we had to get higher up the mountain before tea breaks (mostly because the people we actually wanted to take tea breaks with didn’t live that low).
It was at this point that we missed the trail we were so supposed to follow and so instead we ended up going around and up a mountain on its left side rather than its right. For a while the trail became very steep and we had to break often. But eventually we reached the top, hoping to encounter the trail we were supposed to be on. Only to realize the trail we should be on is straight down the other side. So the moral of this part of a story is don’t go over a mountain when you could have gone around. Anyway, we continued and found the right trail at about 5:30pm. We continued our hike and at around 7:00pm we came to our first Nosu House.
As we approached a woman saw us, ran inside and came out with the Man. We said hello in Nosu and immediately a smile came across his face and he began to motion quickly for us to come inside. Before we had even said anything besides hello, he had our packs off, seats (squared logs) pulled up around the fire in his house and tea in the pot. As we sat around the fire we pulled out a present for him and showed him how to use it, and because he could read he immediately was thankful. He tried to offer me cigarettes and alcohol, but I told him, via extreme coughing and hand motions, that I didn’t smoke and liquor made me sick. They thought I was hilarious. We continued trying to communicate, making all sorts of gestures and even pulling out some paper and drawing pictures. We found out the man was 35, his wife was 25, the worker who lived with them was 20, and that their son was 3. We learned their names but, they were pretty hard to say and even harder to remember. He talked about how he built this house. We talked about how we were going to hike over those (pointing) mountains. Eventually they ended up killing a chicken for us, in front of us. And without going into to much detail, I will just say that his wife was grossed out while he did it. The great news is that they didn’t make us eat any crazy organs, although they were in the serving bowl, and the chicken tasted pretty good (a little chewy, this was not a fat American chicken). He ended up inviting us to spend the night and after we had dinner they sat around and watched us go to sleep. Which was very creepy, but our Chinese contact had told us that they would do it. The reason they watched us, and they watched us do a lot of things that normally people don’t watch other people do, was because it was more than likely that they had only encountered maybe one white person before if any, so they were just curious.
In the morning he cooked us a delicious hash brown like breakfast and gave us some more tips for hiking across the mountains. Then they thanked us again and waved goodbye as we headed out on our second day of hiking.
Also in other news, like the title says, I am now engaged to one miss Loi Husbands. She is an amazing girl who has captured my heart with her way of life and her smoking hot bod (yea thats right). I can not wait to see what the future holds for us.
