Inner Mongolia!

AHHHH I just had the best weekend in Inner Mongolia!!!!!! Vast stretches of grasslands, fluffy white clouds on the brightest blue sky, sunsets, sunrises, endless desert sands, and experiencing pure freedom :)

I left Beijing on Thursday night with Caroline, Hannah, Adrienne, Melissa, Kristi, Jen, Gabby, Sara, Chris, David, Randy, Thomas, and Andrew. We had arranged a four night group tour of Inner Mongolia!

We got picked up from campus by Daniel, the owner of the tour company. We all took an overnight train to Hohhot, the capital of Inner Mongolia. Since we signed up for the tour a bit late, Daniel could not get us tickets on a soft sleeper Z-Train like the one we had taken to Shanghai. Instead, we were spread across one of the cars in a hard sleeper K-Train, but it was still lots of fun! We were joking around about how funny it would be if we were taking an M-Train (which is the term that refers to management majors at Georgia Tech). There were no private compartments on the train. Instead, there were just isles and isles of beds stacked three high! Most of our tickets were for the middle and top beds, and I slept on one of the top beds.

When we arrived in Hohhot, our tour guide Susan met us outside the train on the platform. Susan is 24-years-old, and she grew up in Mongolia. She speaks four languages and kept apologizing that her English was very poor. It wasn't bad at all, and she ended up being an awesome and fun tour guide for our group. She even had a green flag that she held up for us to keep the group together. Haha it was awesome! I've decided that if you live in Inner Mongolia, you are either a farmer or involved in the tourism industry by working as a tour guide, tour bus driver, or at a tourist location.

We had breakfast in the city, and thus began our "Lazy Susan meals". Every meal we ate in Inner Mongolia the entire weekend was Lazy Susan style. We sat at round tables with a turn table (called a Lazy Susan) in the middle. Twelve dishes were served at every meal, and we shared them by rotating the Lazy Susan. For breakfast, we had rice with green bell peppers and chicken, hard boiled eggs, some watermelon, and a variety of different looking bread rolls that all ended up tasting like dough. There were even some rolls that looked like they had chocolate and cinnamon in them, but it ended up being red bean paste. It was interesting. Our dishes at lunch and dinner were pretty similar. Usually we had white rice, a spicy chicken dish, a whole fish (not filleted), steamed bok choy, egg drop soup, bread dough balls, tasty lamb mutton, cabbage, and watermelon.

At every meal, we were either served hot green tea or traditional Mongolian milk tea. Right out of the tea pot, the milk tea tasted very watery and somewhat salty. However, they always served a plethora of additions for the tea, such as sugar, goat cheese, and corn meal. You're supposed to put everything into the tea and eat it with a spoon. It actually tasted really good! It was kind of like eating warm cereal, and it became my comfort food for the weekend :)

After our breakfast in Hohhot, we took a three hour bus ride to the Gegentala Grassland in the Aobao hills. During the ride, Susan asked each of us to go to the front of the bus and talk about ourselves into the microphone. We ended up asking each other crazy questions, like What is your favorite smell?, and Andrew sang "My Girl" into the mic. The scenery along the ride was absolutely gorgeous, but it was nothing compared where we were staying for the night- gentle rolling hills, covered with the greenest grass against a clear blue sky with the fluffiest white clouds, ahhh so picturesque. Even the weather was incredible! It wasn't humid at all! In fact, the air was dry and quite cool, but the sun kept us warm. It was the perfect temperature the whole day. Also, there are no bugs in Inner Mongolia! There are these awesome flying grasshoppers that make cracking noises when they snap their wings together, but there are no biting insects!

We spent the day riding horses across the grasslands! The horses were smaller than I expected, and it was quite funny to see all of us tall Americans on them! I rode on a white horse with black spots that looked like a Dalmatian's coat. We rode to the top of a hill to see a monument the Mongolians use for prayer. Then we rode out to visit a traditional Mongolian family at their farm. They live in dwellings called yurts. Yurts are circular tepees with a hard clay floor covered with rugs and a wooden frame draped with canvas. There was a circular opening in the roof for ventilation that could be closed when it rained. We sat inside the yurt and were served milk tea and deep fried bread sticks for dipping. Yum! An interesting thing to note, the Mongolian woman served tea to the boys first! Quite patriarchal if I do say so myself.

After visiting the family, we rode back to camp. During the entire ride, the guides kept signaling to us to keep our horses at a walk, hardly letting us even trot. I was so anxious to just break away and gallop across the open grasslands. I was getting disappointed as we neared the camp, but then to my excitement, our guide took off and left us in the middle of the fields. Ah I was so excited! I kicked my horse into a full gallop and went flying across the grasslands!!! I was such an amazing feeling- wide open grasslands, the endless blue sky, the wind blowing by, ah I wish I could've let go of the reins and just opened my arms toward the sky! How incredible!

After the amazing horse ride, we watched a Mongolian rodeo that featured horse racing around a track, Mongolian wrestling, and acrobatics on horseback! People were doing handstands on a galloping horse! They were also hanging off the side of the saddle, carrying another rider on their shoulders, making a human pyramid, it was awesome! After the rodeo, me, Hannah, and Caroline went out into the fields to take some pictures with the grasslands. Then, we ate a Lazy Susan dinner and afterward, all of us went back out into the grasslands to watch the sunset! It was incredible! Such vivid colors against such a big sky! I took so many pictures, and looking back at them now still takes my breath away! Did I really see that in real life??

When the sun finally set behind the hills, we went to a bonfire where we watched some performances with Mongolian dancing and singing. One crazy thing about the performance, people were going on stage in the middle of the show to take pictures with the performers!! Yet another example of how the Chinese have no shame... that kind of behavior would be unacceptable in the United States. Family after family was taking their children onto stage to

stand by the singers, right in the middle of the performance! I was in disbelief! The awesome thing was that Adrienne went up there to pose with one of the singers too :)

After the show at the bonfire, I was really excited to see a big night sky full of stars!! To my disappointment, it was a cloudy night, so I didn't get to see a single star. However, there was a really bright moon that illuminated the clouds, so that was neat to see. We went to sleep later that night in our very own yurts! Yes, we stayed in yurts! haha it was really cool!

Caroline and I shared a yurt, and we woke up at 4:20 in the morning along with Hannah, Melissa, Kristi, and Gabby to see the sun rise. We walked for a good 45 minutes to the top of a hill. We watched the pink sky for a good hour, and we were about to turn back when the sun finally peeked out from behind the hills. A big orange globe! We watched it rise from behind the hills, and once it appeared, it rose so quickly! haha it reminded me of the opening scene in the Lion King. When I looked back at pictures, the sky is a beautiful pink and orange with the circular sun right at the horizon. The grasslands are darkened, and when I flip the photos upside down, it looks like the pictures are taken from space!

Oh one fun thing about Inner Mongolia was that we were the only white people there, and the Mongolians were FASCINATED with us! We got our pictures taken so many times, with and without our permission. Depending on what mood I was in, it was either really fun or really annoying to be watched. In the end, I liked it when people would ask me to take my picture instead of just plain snapping one of me when I'm eating dinner.

After the sunrise, we ate breakfast and then got back on the bus for a five hour ride to the Gobi Desert!! On the way, we stopped in the city of Baotan for lunch. Baotan is the second cleanest city in China! The section of the desert that we visited was called the Resonant Sand Gorge, and it had been turned into somewhat of a mini theme park. We took a cable chair ride (or snow ski lift) from the parking lot over to the dunes. When we arrived on the dunes, there was just desert everywhere, stretching in all directions! How cool! The dunes were gorgeous, and I liked how the wind had created ripples across the sand like the waves do to the ocean bottom.

We went on a camel ride, which was so fun! All of our camels were tied together in a line, so we looked like a nice train of camels traipsing across the desert. My camel was beautiful and white and so soft! We sat between the two humps, and it was very comfortable. We got on the camels went they were sitting on the ground, and it was like a roller coaster when the whole line of camels stood up! During our camel ride, there was some lightening in the distance, and then we started to hear thunder, and then it started RAINING in the desert! INSANE! We had to stop and get off our camels in case they spooked. An ATV was driven out to our group to pick us up and take us back to the base camp. We piled 16 wet people into this ATV, and the driver was crazy! He raced across the dunes, bouncing us into the ceiling. The windows were all foggy, so none of us could see outside. There were times when I thought the car was going to roll over! Now THAT was like a roller coaster. It kind of reminded me of Jurassic Park.

After waiting out the storm, we took some sled rides down the side of a steep dune, in which we all got covered in sand from head to toe! We then took the cable chairs back to the bus and headed back to Hohhot. That night, we stayed in Jin Jiang Hotel in Hohhot. It was a FIVE STAR HOTEL!!! Obviously, it was the nicest hotel I have EVER stayed in! Wow, we were ballers in Mongolia! Caroline and I shared a room on the 16th floor, and it had two full size beds, with big fluffy comforters, and two fluffy pillows for each of us! There was also a sitting area with a glass topped desk and a big window overlooking the city. The bathroom was incredible! The shower was actually separated from the toilet! YES! There was also a bathtub, and they gave us complimentary shampoo AND conditioner AND lotion! There were even big soft white towels and BATH ROBES!!! I took the most amazingly warm shower, and then wrapped up in my robe. Caroline and I went over to Kristi and Jen's room where we were joined by Gabby and Sara for a robe party! hahaha :)

After our ballin night at the five star hotel, we ate an awesome breakfast. They had eggs and cereal and milk! I had some peach juice, and it was very tasty! They even had banana bread and it was so moist and yummy, so of course I had four pieces :) After breakfast, Susan took us to visit the Dazhao Lamasery, the Five Pagoda Temple, and the Zhaojun Tomb. The Dazhao Lamasery was a traditional Chinese Buddhist temple built in the same style as the temples in the Forbidden City. The Five Pagoda Temple was really pretty, and there were little buddhas along the walls that people had given little yi jiao coins. To get to the top of the pagoda, we climbed through a steep staircase in a small dark tunnel. Nice! At the Zhaojun Tomb, there was a museum about the Huns that included artifacts like swords, bowls, and armor from 200 B.C.! The Zhaojun Tomb was for one of the Hun Kings, and it was at the top of a hill, guarded by a pagoda of course!

After touring Hohhot, we had some time to spare, so we walked around a mall in the city, and Caroline and I bought some juice and relaxed in a nearby park, similar to Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta. They had a big concrete amphitheater with a huge TV screen that was showing a soccer game. Caroline and I chilled on the stairs, and as we were sitting, people started wandering over and sitting near us. I guess they were interested in the white people. A homeless man came over to ask us for money, and two boys paid him and shooed him away from us. That was nice of them. Also at the park, there were these ponds, and floating on the water were these big, clear, hollow plastic balls. Inside the balls were CHILDREN! Yes! Like hamsters! Running around in the balls on the water! Crazy! It looked like fun, but something like that would never happen in the US.

Later that evening, we ate dinner and then Susan took us to the train station. We took a group photo in front of the bus (it was called the Golden Dragon). Then, we bid goodbye to Susan and our awesome bus driver, Mr. Li, who was one of the most animated people I've ever met, and he didn't speak a word of English! We took the K-Train home, and arrived in Beijing this morning at 7:30. The tour company picked us up from the station and took us back to campus in rush hour traffic. We even passed a six car accident where they had all run into each other's bumpers! We ended up making it to our 9:00 class just in time! What an awesome weekend!