This week-end has been a lot of firsts for me here in Hengyang. I had a teacher friend visit from Changsha, and it gave me an excuse to visit places in the city I had never been to before. Some of the places we visited were a beautiful park, a Korean restaurant, and an island. We had an enjoyable time.

The island we visited was quite interesting. At one time, there was a famous Chinese caligrapher who had a school on this island. There is also a buddhist temple there. Other than that, there are mostly just farmers and local people who run the temple. While we were there, we saw two women monk. It was a little sad for me to see that people truly believe that by burning incense at the temple, they can have their wish come true.

Some of the recent pictures I took were also from my trip to Wuhan last week-end. Wuhan is a large, modern city. We met other foreign, women teachers there for a women's retreat. It was pretty great to eat pizza, Dairy Queen, and Starbucks. Toward the end though, I was happy to return to our slower-paced city.

Check out the new album on my blog: http://picasaweb.google.com/chinatripchinatripchinatrip