Gulin Trip, Days 1-2

My apologies in the delay for my report on the latest excursion! Sorry!

Anyhow, the Guilin Trip started on a Saturday that really isn't worth mentioning at all, to be honest. Why is that particular day not worthy enough to be described in-depth, you may ask? Simple - most of that day was spent on a most uneventful train ride. At around 1:30 PM in the afternoon, all TBC students going on the trip piled into several buses, we drove over to the train station, boarded for a 4:15 departure, and spent nearly a day traveling down south...the end. Not much of a crowd-pleasing story, as you can see.

Unfortunately, half of the next day wasn't any more exciting due to the fact that it wasn't until sometime between 2:00-3:00 PM that the train finally arrived in Guilin, located in scenic Guanxi Province, and home to some of the most beautiful karst formations in the world....kinda. 

Shortly after we arrived, we took two buses over to a large hill, where I took a journey and what was quite possibly the longest chair lift ride of my whole entire life, which isn't exactly all that exciting for folks like me who grow quite uncomfortable when confronted with perilous heights. 

Finally though, after what felt like nearly an eternity, we made it to the top, where I could enjoy a spectacular view of....er....fog, and a considerable amount of it, at that. While I admit, the mountains rising out of the mist was beautiful in an easy way, I would have preferred viewing them in sunlight, so that I would've been able to see them clearly in their full glory. Alas, the weather is its own master. 

Here's me and Emilio, a Italian Jesuits staying at TBC this semester....though he's overflowing with such personality, upon first meeting him, you'd probably find it quite difficult to believe that he's an ordained priest. He's already confused some TBC students early on in the semester about his vocation, to his extreme amusement. Emilio actually even once fooled a student into believing that he had a wife and family back in Italy.  

After enjoying the view for about an hour or so, we all boarded the almost ridiculously long chair lift and descended back down, though only to the halfway point. There, most TBC-ers got off to travel the rest of the way down on a winding metal track upon curious wheeled "toboggans", which was actually quite a blast, despite the fact that the entire time I was afraid I would lose control and fly off the tracks (which supposedly as happened to TBC students in past years.)

The rest of the day was fairly uneventful - we checked in to our hotel, groups of folks had dinner on their own, and either explored the area or turned in for the night. However, I did realize something quite peculiar that night while strolling through the special city (tourist) district where many of the trendy shops, restaurants, and souvenir joints were located - quite a lot of the souvenirs resemble the keepsakes for sale in Beijing....which bare an extremely strong resemblance to the souvenirs I found in Dunhuang during the Silk Road Trip....along with the souvenirs in Jiayuguan... and the souvenirs in Xian....and Luoyang....and Inner Mongolia...