After breakfast we checked out of our hotel in Guilin and took the bus with our group to the wharf on the Li River and took a boat down the river to a small town called Yangshuo. The boat ride was about 2 hours and the mountains and landforms were amazing! We also saw water buffalo. The boat had inside seating on two levels and inside it was air conditioned, but you could also go out onto the deck on the 2nd level and there was a 3rd level that was a deck on the top of the boat. It was pretty hot and bright outside, but we were able to walk around and go in and out.. During the boat ride, Ezekiel had a very long conversation with Rick, one of the dads in our group, about his stuffed White Mouse (a.k.a. "Surprised") and all of his special powers like walking on his tail, jumping over rivers, curling up into a ball, etc. It was really funny, and it was really nice of Rick to be a captive audience for so long. If you know Ezekiel, you know how he loves to talk! We got to Yangshuo around 1:00 and then had a long, hot walk to a restaurant where we all ate lunch together and then took a bus to our new hotel. This hotel is different than all the other ones we've been in so far - it's more of a retreat center and sort of reminds us of the Sleeping Lady in Leavenworth. Our room is rustic and we have a beautiful view out of our window of the Dragon River and the mountains.
We didn't have anything scheduled for the afternoon so the boys played in our hotel room with their toys for awhile and then we went outside and sat with some of the other families along the river. It is so hot and humid here that when we walk outside our glasses get fogged up, but it was pretty nice sitting in the shade. Our hotel has bikes for people to use to ride around the area but we didn't want to get TongJie's hopes up after he was disappointed about the bikes at the Xian city wall so Jeff went to check and found that there were tandem bikes and bikes with kid seats on the back. We lowered the back seat of the tandem bike and it was low enough that TongJie could reach the pedals, so he and Jeff rode the tandem bike and I rode on one of the bikes with Ezekiel in the kid seat on the back. We rode around for quite awhile and had a great time. The views are amazing, and we passed gardens and small farms, including rice farms. I took lots of pictures with my camera but we don't have a way to put those onto our blog right now so I'll have to add some after we get home. The boys LOVED the bike ride, and Ezekiel said he wanted to keep riding all the way to Wenatchee :)
This evening we had to say goodbye to one of the families from our group who will be leaving at 5 am to travel to the city of their daughter's orphanage. It's coming to the time where everybody will be splitting up to go to their different cities, but the rest of us have tomorrow morning together before we go our separate ways. The family that we said goodbye to this evening (Rod, Pia, Travis and Kendra), has been especially helpful to our family, always offering to carry things (and kids) for us, sitting with our boys on the bus and train rides, and just being really kind to everybody in the group. TongJie was especially sad to say goodbye to Travis. Tomorrow we get to take a cooking class in the morning and then eat what we've cooked for lunch, then our group will split up and go in different directions to visit the cities of the orphanages. We will be traveling with Sarah to Wenzhou in the Zhejiang province, and then end our time in Hangzhou, which is the capital city of the Zhejiang province.
Pictures: 1. On the boat on the Li River, 2. Lunch with our group, 3. View from our hotel window
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