On Saturday morning all the foreign teachers from my school left to go to a mountain three hours outside of our city. There were five Drake students from this year, one from last year that is teaching again this year (Shirly), a Canadian couple (Noelle and Norman), a Japanese teacher, and two Ukrainian teachers (one teaches Russian, the other teaches piano) along with our waiban Zhang and his family. The name of the mountain is Zhangshiyan. On Saturday we hiked to a couple locations. One was to this large concave part of the mountain which was perfect for echoes. The other was led to a temple that overlooked a dammed pond. A very ideallic scene, indeed. You can see it in the pictures.
On Sunday, we climbed the largest part of the mountain. I don't think any of us knew exactly what we were getting ourselves into. We took a lift up to one location and then we ended up going up what seemed like a myriad of stairs. It was hilarious though, because at one point it seemed like whoever constructed the stairs in the rock stopped caring because the stairs gradually started becoming just footholds. Some spots got really steep. It took us about an hour and a 1/2 to get up the mountain but it was well worth it and we explored the peak for about another hour and a 1/2. One of the Ukrainian teachers has to be at least 60, but she didn't faulter at all! She's one tough old bird.
On the way back to Shijiazhuang, our driver hit a number of bumps in the road without slowing down. Some of these bumps literally forced us out of our seats. After one such bump, the engine gradually stopped running. The driver attempted to turn over the shuttle a couple of times but to no avail. Each time there was a clicking noise, and from my limited knowledge of cars, this means that there is an electrical malfunction. Our driver opened up the compartment holding the battery and knocked some things around with a wrench. I thought "Oh, well that will help." Eventually we all got outside of the shuttle and the driver asked us all to push. We pushed to get the shuttle going at a good speed until the driver tried to turn it over (just like Little Miss Sunshine). We tried this three times to no avail. Finally, the driver opened up the fuse compartment in the passenger side, reconnected one of the fuses, and everything was just dandy.
Not too many other funny stories to tell besides that. It was just a really satisfying weekend.
One funny thing though: On Saturday evening when we had dinner, our waiban asked us what we wanted to drink. He said, "Would you like to drink...ALCOHOL?" and as he said alcohol his eyes got very large. Maybe you had to be there.
Also, when we asked our waiban what time we were having dinner when we got back from hiking he said, "Later, later." This is his usually his answer to questions concerning what time events will take place. We said, "Well...we would just like to know whether we have time to rest or take a shower." He said, "Ok, 10 minutes." haha. I think his notion of "later" is anywhere from within a few minutes to a couple years from now.
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