Today was pretty boring, we were on the bus for like 12 hours driving from Chengdu to Jiuzhaigou, so there really isn’t much to write about (but of course as usual, I’ll make this long essay out of nothing =P). Anyways, this morning we were supposed to go see this aqueduct sort of thing that was built 2000 years ago to split the Ming river into two separate rivers, called Du Jiang Yan. Instead, we waited in the hotel for a couple hours because Terry’s mom had a headache and her blood pressure was high (she measured using a meter she brought). However, everyone’s blood pressure was too high according to the meter, so they asked for the hotel doctor. The reason we were worried was because Chengdu is like 500m above sea level, and we were going to drive to around 5000m above sea level on our trip to Jiuzhaigou. The problem with waiting for a doctor was that the guy wasn’t in until 8 am and we woke up at like 5:30 (to go to Du Jiang Yan). Therefore we sat in the hotel lobby and waited.

When the doctor was in, everyone went to see him (except Eric and I) and everyone checked out to be normal. Therefore, we decided to stop by Du Jiang Yan just to see it for a few minutes, and then we headed on our way to Jiuzhaigou.

The road we took followed alongside the Ming River all the way up to Jiuzhaigou. The problem was that the road was extremely bumpy at times, causing for some discomfort…and also luggage almost following onto Xu shu shu who was sitting in the back. We made a few stops to buy stuff and go to the bathroom. Well at our first break, the goal was to buy oxygen canisters just in case anyone felt dizzy as the elevation increased (note: there are still plenty of canisters left meaning I can spend my time wasting them all away…fun). At the same store, my dad pointed me to a shelf where there was packaged…get this…wolf meat, deer meat, camel meat, donkey meat, and dog meat…ugghhh.

On that note, all our following stops were just to go to the bathroom and stuff. Interstingly enough, we had to pay 5 jiao to go to the bathroom…and they weren’t that nice anyways. At this same spot, there were a lot of people desperately selling fruit. Our bus parked near them and when we opened the door, they all closed in on the bus trying to solicit and stuff. I felt really bad for the kids who had to live this way. There whole lives, they may never have the kind of opportunities that I receive just because they were born into this situation.

At our second bathroom stop, we were like at this little street market. Well, when I entered the bathroom that I paid to get into, I found a bunch of stalls lined up down the room, and a break in the floor with a river of water (and other stuff) flowing down into a ditch outside (which of course I took a picture of). This means that if one person goes number two in the first stall, it’ll pass underneath every single stall an then…plop…fall into a big ditch…refreshing.

Well, the rest of the trip wasn’t all too exciting; I mostly slept. However, two final things to note are that it was kind of interesting to watch the color of the water in the river change from a nasty brown (because it recently rained) to a beautiful pristine blue-green. The mountain-air was fresh as well, except for the occasional exhaust that happened to make it into the bus. The second thing to note was that all the adults were trying to learn Sichuan hua (Szechuan dialect). However, they sounded more like they were speaking like Americans with poor Chinese (because the dialect doesn’t juan she, and have nasal sounds).

At around 8:30 pm, we finally got to the hotel (Jiuzhaigou Hotel…3 stars…we’re staying in room 103). It’s not too bad, but the bathroom doesn’t look all that great…at least we have the V network again. We’ll be staying here three nights, so hopefully I’ll live through it. Right now Eric’s being really stupid by playing around with my alarm clock, and he’s getting very annoying. Okay, well better get as much sleep as I can, good night.