trip update: Guilin

I meant to post this a couple days ago, but then I put it off because I couldn't get my photos to load on our crappy internet connection, but I thought I could make it work if I kept trying. I was wrong, and now we're not in Guilin anymore, but it's late and it's been a long day, so I'll have to tell you about Chongqing and post some photos another day. In the meantime . . .

I know my posts have been few and far between since we've been on this trip. I really meant to get some pictures up while we've been here in Guilin, but the internet connection here has left much to be desired. It seems to be a big problem--the connections at the hostels are too slow for me to get many pictures up in any kind of timely fashion. Maybe I'm just taking too many pictures--I think I have something like 700 so far. I'll try to include more travel stories when we get back to Tianjin, or someplace with a good reliable internet service.

Here's a short update, especially to put our mom's hearts at ease: we are in Guilin, safe and relatively healthy (I seem to have caught a cold somewhere along the way--probably when that kid on the last train we were on kept staring at us and coughing right in our faces without covering his mouth). Guilin is beautiful. It is known as one of the most famous scenic spots in China, with mountains, lakes, and caves everywhere--it was one of the earliest tourist spots in China, attracting tourists as far back as the Sui dynasty (581-618 AD). Yesterday we tried to take a count of how many mountains we've climbed in the three (now four) days we'd been here, and we honestly couldn't remember. Maybe six? Of course, they're kind of short mountains--actually, really weird, jutting mountains, that rise abruptly out of the city landscape--kind of like enormous rocks with staircases. My thighs have had some serious stairmaster-type workouts since we've been here. The last couple of days, the weather has been absolutely gorgeous and spring-like. I didn't even need a jacket yesterday, much less the long underwear I've been wearing for the past couple of months.

We leave tomorrow, February 1, for our next stop: Chongqing. It's north a bit, so I have a feeling it's going to be much colder than it has been here.

Unfortunately, I can't post any photos right now, due to unreliable internet connections. Once we're back in the land of reliable internet, I'm planning to create a photobucket account so, if you're interested, you can see all the pictures from our trip. More info about that soon . . . .