China! After English Camp!

The night English Camp ended all of the teachers went out for some delicious HOT POT! It's like fondue except instead of hot oil, it's boiling soup. We got a pot with half spicy and half mild, and let me tell you, the spicy was HOT! They served us plates and plates of thinly sliced lamb and beef and we dumped them in the boiling broth, waited a few minutes and then ate them. They also gave us some gluten balls, the brown things in the picture, which were pretty bland and crunchy if you ate them straight, or they were nice and soft if you dropped them in the hot pot. It was a delicious meal, we loved it.


The next day some of us went to a park about an hour and a half from the school. It had huge beautiful cliffs and nice shallow water we could walk in. As soon as we got off the bus there were some people walking towards us with horses so a few of us gave in and went for a horseback ride. They said it was only 10 yuan, which is like $1.50!!! Who could pass that up! So we went on the ride, it was like 5 min around a small circular path. Then they said it was 10 more if we went over by the rocks, so we did it, I mean $3 c'mon! Then they said it was 20 yuan more if we wanted to go IN THE WATER. I was not interested, I could just see one of our horses losing it's footing on the rocks and then we'd end up with a horse on top of our broken leg, in a river, IN CHINA. But Mitch convinced me so we went for it. It was pretty pleasant and the guys leading us kept offering to take pictures of us so that was nice, except they kept instructing us to pose certain ways.... Well the whole trip ended up costing about $15 TOTAL for the both of us, so I guess it was worth it!


Oh another thing we saw at this park area, were about 20 ladies in Wedding gowns prancing through the rocks and water! We could not figure out what was going on but then we guessed it was maybe a photo shoot for a bridal magazine or something. Pretty crazy, you don't see that every day!
After we left the English camp school we stayed with a family and did some sight seeing. One day Mitch and I went to the Summer Palace. We visited there 2 years ago with the Purdue Marching Band and loved it so we wanted to go back. It was still beautiful, but about 20 degrees hotter...

Another fun thing we did was go to Pizza Hut!!!! MMMmmmMMMmmm! We were definitely craving some western food, specifically pizza, so it was a great meal. The funny thing is, Pizza Hut in China is like ritzy high class restaurants with snail appetizers, shrimp, and mashed potatoes, in addition to pizza. Oh yeah and about the same price as the US, which seems like a lot when everything else in China is way cheaper.