The beaches of Sanya!

Our final and last vacation we went to Sanya China. Our first night arriving was rough. We tried to save money and sleep in the airport...bad idea. At 3 AM we got kicked out and missed the last bus into town by a minute. We sat our bags in a circle on a piece of grass for as long as we could take it before we decided we would walk. What we didnt know is how far away we were from anything. At 4 we finally by chance saw a taxi driving down the road and in .2 seconds 8 girls piled into one cab. Long story short...after a really really long night of living homeless we pulled into Sanya! From the looks of it you would have thought we snuck away to Hawaii. It was beautiful white sandy beaches, fresh mangos with each meal, and we even got a to stay in a "fine" hostel, cockroaches included in the package. They even threw in flying, giant roaches just to make it special. For two of the days we pretended to live the high life and snuck into the marriot resort on another part of the island. Kelcy and I lived the beach bum life while the others layed out by the giant hotel pool. We prefered the sound of the ocean and the sand stuck to our toes, while we perfected our tan that has now peeled off in random spots, making us look like lepers. It was one of the most relaxing trips we have been on though, no sleeper buses off roading in the middle of the night, no holiday crowds to push through, just the beach fresh fruit smoothies! We even managed to parasail, and get massages in our room before going to bed. We found some guy on the street that wanted to give a massage and invited him in for some nightly roman noodles. He was a good pang yuo (friend). He even gave kelc chinese burn cream that smelled like tree bark. It was the perfect trip to end with. We had a lot of giggles and are now ready to just get back home to america for christmas! We only have 3 weeks left of this adventure. What an experience this has been. We have learned so much about ourselves and life. We have made memories and friendships that will last a life time. Its hard to think that soon this will all just be a memory. There have been so many great times here...as well as hard but nothing that has made this whole thing not worth it. Thanks everyone for supporting us though this and all your love. We miss you and love you!

Working Through the depression

Guilin Trip

Exotic Fruit Hunt!

Well first, I know we are horrible at updating our blog and finding the time to write what the pictures actually mean when we finally do put them up. Wow talk about run on sentence. Oh well its too late to go back and fix it haha. So moving onto our adventures. Our first adventure began here with a "chinese exotic fruit hunt". Honestly it wasnt much of a "hunt" more than it was laughing with the funnest chinese families you will ever meet. Calvin (the boy in the blue shirt) became our best peng yuo (friend in chinese. Its a common term we use for all the chinese taxi drivers that get us lost.) It was his family and friends that we tagged along with. We started the early morning off on the side of the highway in a smoking van. Call it the Young family curse but everything we touch seems to break down...my poor peng yuo's must suffer the consequences of being friends with me...a young. Every few miles we would hear the engine shut off and putt to the side of the road. It made for great entertainment when all the boys kept yelling bad car in chinese. That became a famous line the remainer of the trip. Needless to say our van just needed a warm up run cause in time it got us to our destinations. The first half of the drive was beautiful until London (our roommate) yelled out...Really, can you see the size of that spider? It's the size of my head!" We laughed thinking we were pass the danger...weren't we wrong. Try this experiment, get a mirror and look at the size of your head. Now picture a spider that size. Now picture my friendly spiders on steroids to the left of you, to the right of you, above you, and infront you, just staring at you in the middle of thier huge delicate webs. Now you know what we experienced. The chinese advice walk in the middle of the mini trail and look forward so you dont accidentally run into a web. Nice advice huh? Calvin walked around with his stick claiming they would only jump if they sensed movement on their web. So what do little boys do...they provoke the man eating insects. So thats what kelc and I are pointing at if your wondering.

Happily we survived our treck through the jungle hoping to have a good lunch. This is where the food pictures come into play. You know what your eating isnt normal when the boys, that speak fairly good english, need a translation book to even give you an idea of what it on the plate infront of you. We ate wild bore, goose, a huge fish that they decided to rip its head off infront of us, lots of other random things that they couldnt find the name of, and bite size gold fish, not the crunchy chedder kind...these ones literally were a snack that smiles back, until you bit their heads off. Yep we ate a mini fish eyes an all. Kelc got it in her mouth but couldn't couldnt find it in her to bite down.

In the end we made it home safe with new great friendships and new eyes to how wonderful this culture and these people really are. There is no words to describe the kindness we recieved from these small families. We grew to love them within the first few hours we met them. When they dropped us off at the end of the day Calvin gave us each a hug and said "we are friends now. We like having new friends." It was an experience that we will all hold forever in our thoughts as our great beginning to the adventures we still had ahead of us. Nothing in China is ever what you expect which is half the fun in the adventure.

Good bye Cedar City...Good bye USA

Well here we go off to China! Day one of our adventures starts Wednesday at eight thirty pm on a 14-16 hour plan flight. Sounds like fun huh!? We are getting super nervous but im sure when things are not so "unknown" it will be everything we are hoping it will be. Dont you think we will blend in well with all the chineses...yeah right. By now there is no looking back... Hope China is ready for us!!