October Holiday

October Holiday is a Fall Break for the students in China. During this time period, the students may go home, so we had the option to either stay in Wuhan or travel. We decided to make a long distance trip to Xinjiang Province. Xinjiang is at the top western part of China. It took us 36 hours by train to get there. We arrived in a place called Urumqi. Urumqi is a small, clean town with a much smaller population than you could imagine. We spent the first two nights their and went out to the park, behind our hostel, and rode crickets and ducks. We also traveled through the town, where the culture was mostly Arabic. Their was many street vendors with all sorts of crafts and goods alongside the road. We had the priviledge of tasting the spicy food and the Nan bread (I believe this is correct).

On Monday night we travelled to Turpan by a sleeper bus which arrived on Tuesday morning. Turpan is a lot of country with few people. We were able to go here and relax. While we were here we went bike riding to see ancient ruins (of what i can't remember, maybe later), which took about 3 or 4 hours, and we visited a fabolous restaurant where we received homemade grapejuice. We actually saw them pull it from the vine! In Turpan we also ate at a wonderful Texas restaurant, which we our stomachs regretted that night. We departed from Turpan on Thursday.

We took a sleeper bus to Kanas Lake. Kanas Lake has many mountains and beautiful crystal blue water. We were able to get a little glimpse of fall, which was wonderful. We also had the amazing priviledge of staying in a yirt that night (for all of you who do not know what a yirt is you should feel deprived, it is sorta like a tepee). This made me feel like a real mountain man, i know your jealous. That night was the first time in China i was able to see stars. I might also mention that this Kanas Lake borders Mongolia, Russia, and Kazakhstan. It was beautiful their but freezing! I think i wore about 4 layers of clothes, which seems normal in Alabama right. (The top picture if it has not changed by now is a picture of me at Kanas Lake). We proceeded to stay there until Thursday night, then headed back to Urumqi to catch our flight.

On Friday, we were all wore out, and were ready to get back to Wuhan. Well we thought that we were going back. Tara and I did not get our passports back from the police station so we learned a valuable lesson, you cannot travel on a plane without a passport. Laurie stayed with Tara and I in Urumqi while Tara and I waited for our passports were rush delivered! We were able to arrive back on Sunday night and had class the next morning.