HAPPY NEW YEARS!

so we're not going to mention the getting to Guilin part of the trip because that was a nightmare and a bad experience all together so we'll just forget that part.
but we are now in Yangshuo (yang-shwo) Guilin (gway-leeng). and i am in love with it.
our hostel's pretty sweet, it has a portland-ish feel to it. i love it. and best things ever 1. WESTERN TOILETS! 2. MATTRESSES!! AND PADDING!! 3. HEATERS!!!!!!!!
leaving here is going to be hard. this place is what we imagined china as. it's a very touristy town but there are shops everywhere, particularly West Street which is the main street and where everything is but the best part is we are surrounded by huge gorgeous mountains. and not like in the distance mountains, like in your face mountain after mountain with a beautiful river running through the town (Li River). its ridiculous.
so today was exploring and seeing what we got day. but actually turned into art appreciation day. we set out to explore West Street, which we knew was the place to go and hey what do you know, its down the street from our hostel.
so there are tons of shops that sell the scrolls with chinese paintings on them, like the ones you see everywhere. but this one a little different. it was owned by a husband and wife and their daughter, who are all artists. and they hand-painted every picture, but these werent just the scrolls of the regular repeated pictures you can find anywhere, these were gorgeous watercolors of the Li River and other scenes from around Yangshuo. They were absolutely amazing, so we picked up a few there.
Then more walking. and its not set up like booths, they're more like walking into stores, just very little ones but you cant just go and look at stuff because then you excite the people and they think you're actually going to buy something, but you just want to say, nope just looking. we feel bad just walking away so we act interesting and listen to their little sales pitch in the little english they know. the only bad part of yangshuo is that its new years right. like the actual days are today and tomorrow even though they celebrate it for two weeks. and its actually a family holiday so a bunch of places either close down early or just are closed. so it was actually pretty dead today. so we were DEFinately noticed. we also bought some big fans too which were pretty.
and then all day we've been trying to find a place that makes custom dresses. our head teacher told us this is the place she got hers, but we couldnt find one so we're going to keep trying.

then probably the coolest thing of the day. so we went and got lunch at yes, KFC..(its just a quick place we can trust) and then we were just walking along the street and this store that just had a table outside of it had these hand painted teacups that caught my eye. and this lady goes on and on about how the red is the color of lucky in china, very popular. and yellow is very nice. red color and yellow color are emperor color together. and blue, is very favorite. and we're just like yea.. they are very beautiful. then the others walk up and they go into the store and we go around this curtain deal and this room is just a bunch of shelves full of these little vases. but these just werent vases these were all hand painted GORGEOUS vases. they were exquisit.
and the brother was in the back and he just starts talking about the vases and turns out this is no ordinary store. these vases were all hand-painted by his father, who turns out is a very famous and prestigous artist. His works are actually in some art museum, i cant quite remember the name, but he showed us pictures of the pieces that are in the museum and he was featured in a newspaper. but these vases were absolutely amazing. he turned off the lights and put a candle in them and told us this is how you have to view the pieces because that is how you can truly see the beauty, and believe me it made a difference. they were so details the ones he was emphasizing were these red ones that had bamboo painted on them. and he said that only his father can make the porcelin the color red it was and on it had a chinese proverb on it that said "you can eat without meat, but you can't live without bamboo" and he told that the bamboo grew straight and upwards and so should a man. it was way neat. they had lamps all over the place that he insisted that every time you'd even look at a lamp too long that you have to "kiss" it to the lamp to get the best look. we spent so much time in that shop. we were just awed by the beauty of these vases. also one of the teachers bought a flute from some man in the street and he played it for us. it was awesome. just over all art appreciation day.

okay now for night time. so today and tomorrow is the actual new years day. so the day might've seemed shut down but it came more to life during the night time. there were more shops open and we just looked around some more, boosting the chinese economy by buying souviners and what nots. we went and ate at some chinese restuarant (ha, yea what else right?) and then it was dark so we headed to the waterfront. because connecting to West Street is the Li River, which we didnt realize before and we knew there were going to be fireworks there so we went and there were. lots of them. there were just groups of people doing their own thing. so we watched them a bit and then headed down a bit more to where more people were with bigger ones. and we get to this main waterfront area and we buy some fireworks (way dirt cheap and good ones too, as in mortar type, as in awesome). and they're just going off everywhere. theres a bunch of kids with sparklers and these poppers that make our poppers look like pieces of dirt. they actually have a big (ha i just tried to type big and huge and didnt notice and accidentally wrote buge haha) okay they have a big crack and explode with smoke and all and everyones throwing those at each other. it was just neat especially shooting them off over the river. okay now for the good story. so we're in a touristy place right now like there's tons of foreigners but no americans so far. we met an older swedish man at the bus station today. and megan had a good little convo with a german couple with their kids. and we've just seen a bunch of foreigners, mostly russian. okay so we're standing there on this stone bridge thing and chantelle and me are shooting off these roman candle like deals. and i'm just holding it out there and fidgeting with my camera and out of the corner of my eye i see these two white guys standing next to us and as i'm shooting off this firework i see them take a step closer. and i'm just like oh gosh. so one comes up and asks me "how does this work" pointing to the firework. and i tell him, well you just light the top and then hold it out. nothing too exciting but hey its..fun?.. yea totally got hit on tonite. by two very goodlooking ISRAELIC boys (though they looked more european to me). we ended up talking to these guys for a good 15 minutes, because i mean come on, they were goodlooking and had sweet accents. you cant just pass that up. The one that talked to me first was Isaac (he pronounced it like eet-zik) and he was from Jerusalem. ha. yea. and so was his friend Omer (also from Israel), but they met here in yangshuo. Isaac has been traveling different places around asia just going to a bunch of cities and countries and Omer is pretty much just touring asia. its ridiculous. and at the beginning of the conversation Isaac was telling me about this regae party later and he hands me a flyer because i asked him where it was (don't worry i had no intention on going) and the flyer says "Bob Marley: 6 Feb 1945; When the moon and the Bob share a birthday, music will fill the universe" lol. but we talked to them and told them we were teachers and talked about nothing and watched some fireworks together. and then they said they were going to the "big regae party" and that we should come. here we had to tell them that we cant go to bars or drink alcohol or we get sent home (an actual ilp rule, along with pairing off with opposite sex) and we had to part ways. but meeting them totally made my night, and i guess i was really happy after that and kept saying it was a good night until lorenda said "well of course its a good night when you get hit on." haha. so that was a good little ego boost i spose. :) so mom, i'm bringing home an israelic boy if thats okay :) haha.
okay so we saw fireworks tonite and it was good, but i expected a little more to be honest. so as i was writing this blog it was like 3 minutes until midnite and pretty much our town just EXPLODED with fireworks. there are these machine gun ones that literally shake your body if your in the vacinity and thats exactly what they sound like is just a big loud machine gun of explosions. yea i'm pretty sure like 100 went off at the same time along with tons and tons of the huge loud ones. it sounded like a storm/war was going on so we booked it out onto the street and the sky was FILLED with fireworks. and it was legit because some of them were behind the mountains which then lit up from behind. we went up to our rooms on the 4 floor and had a good look out on some big ones that were farther away.
so FINALLY we're in 2008. i always thought i was a day ahead of all of you, but really i was a year behind. lol. but we finally caught up.
so HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEARS!!!! year of the rat/mouse, here we come :)