Yellow River Trip

One of the trips that Sias provides for its teachers is going on a hovercraft on the Yellow River and spending time in the park near by.  While the trip on the river wasn't terribly awesome, I did get to ride a horse and be in a hovercraft.  We got some pretty awesome pictures in the park.

This is a pretty awesome picture of Jon, who is a sophmore English teacher and coordinator of all the foreign teacher activites.  He went with us to the banquet (which will be my next post).

The Yellow River is filled with silt and it was also an especially rainy day that Saturday, so things were pretty muddy.  The hovercraft was pretty awesome and glided over all the mud and water no problem.  I think it was the first time I had ever been in one.  The tour guide said that having lots of Yellow river mud on your shoes meant that you would be prosperous.  My muddy boots are still in my room, I haven't cleaned them yet.  Those two facts are unrelated.

Halfway through the trip was a camp with all of these horses that you could ride for ten kuai.  They looked pretty healthy (not like other places I've seen) and it was pretty fun.  The woman wouldn't let me have control of the reigns, though.  She thought it was tood muddy and I might do something stupid.  I actually had worn my cowboy boots that day, so I was super prepared for horseback riding.

There was a lady selling pomegranates as well and they were pretty awesome.  It reminded me of the time we made pomegranate jelly out of all those ones sent by Nanny Gomez with Danielle.

After the ride was the park, so we spent two hours wandering around.  It began to drizzle halfway through so I ended up taking a nap on the bus.  But they did have these cool bell things that didn't actually make noise.

J.I. (one of the foreign students who lives in Peter Hall cause his parents work at Sias) taught Nick some break dancing moves.  Well, maybe one.  I just happened to get it on camera.

There is this huge statue of two of the early Chinese emperors that were built in the 1980s as a tourist spot, but it's pretty cool to to look at.  It makes for a nice park, and an awesome thing to take pictures with.  Erin did a great job of lining us up.

I just need a beard to match.  I already have the pensive look down.

There were a lot of rock faces that were fun to climb.  J.I. ripped a hole in the crotch of his pants because they were too tight and David hurt his heel jumping down from one of the higher rocks.  It does provide some cool shots.

All in all, it was a good day.  I was super exhausted afterwards, though.The rock climbing channeled my inner child (and a wayward youth spent climbing trees).