So, for our regularly scheduled Guangzhou update.

It's hot here. Not quite Thailand hot, but more humid. Anyway, I finished the two-ish week summer program. While that's not particurarly strenuous, it was every day including the weekend before, during, and after. So that's sort of like a 16 day straight work week, with only 1 sort of day of inbetween. Needless to say I am really glad that's over with. The kids were mostly nice, and some were just delightful. Overall I found the teens pretty similar to Thai teens, but less shy. The kids were the same everywhere, minus one who was crazy ADHD. Not that I am qualified to make that call, but he really tried my patience. Especially when he decided to take everything out of my bag during the middle of a class.

What the heck, man! Anyway, it's all done, and it was a large burden lifted off my shoulders. So what better way to throw a burden back on them with a trip to Qujing, China! Now, both of my faithful readers (mom, and for some reason still someone in Ukraine) may not know about Qujing. But it's Ella's hometown, and we haven't visited her folks since New Years a year and a half-ish ago. So with some time off, it was as good a time as any.As far as life in Qujing, there isn't much to say. We did visit a beautiful temple that was very recently built a bit out in the countryside. But, as I say with Thai Wats and Chinese Temples, if you've seen one, you've seen 99% of them. The only real highlight of the trip was a visit to a local cave. Very very local, it was used as an air raid shelter back in the day. But the inside was beautiful, full of interesting rock formations. And after you go outside, you're in the middle of a covered walkway in the middle of the forest, to go back in another part of the cave. Definitely the most blog-worthy part of the trip. Well, except of course the store named Bull Tit Anus (see photo). But seriously, spending time Ella's parents is nice as well. Her mother is very sweet, and I try to communicate with her Dad (who only speaks a local dialect).

Yes, someone thought this would be a good name for a chain of stores.

Now back in Guangzhou, we had a few day trips out and about to better familiarize ourselves with our home. With previously mentioned Daniel, we spent a day to visit Sun Yat Sen University, regarded as the best University in Southern China. You may not know Sun Yat Sen, but he was the Republic of China's founder. The ROC was the government that overthrew the Qing Dynasty, and fled to Taiwan before the Communists took over in 1949. It's odd that he's one of the few people that both the mainland and Taiwan have a lot of respect for. This could be a whole article in and of itself, and maybe that will happen one day. But for now, nice University. Sort of small, but super green.

Speaking of Sun Yat Sen (Or Sys, as the cool kids call him... alright just me), we also went to his memorial hall. A lavish building that doubles as an event space/concert hall, there's not much to it except to see the building itself. The inside has some stuff on the walls about his life, and we saw some kids rehearsing for some sort of thing. Nice enough if you're in the area, but don't go out of your way for it. After we climbed up the mountain behind to see a monument to him on the hill, and to visit the Guangzhou Museum. The GZ Museum isn't exactly large, and I gather that's because all of their stuff got moved to the shiny new Guangdong Museum downtown. And when I say shiny new, I mean covered in glass shiny and 1 hour to get tickets new. We'll eventually get there, but for now, the GZ Museum's main attraction was its fancy building, and lots of pottery. Oh, pottery. As I said in some previous blog, I don't care much for it. All civilizations had it, and it's just chunks of hard brown dirt. But I did see a photo of when Nicholas Cage visited there, so I had that going for me.

The man. The Legend.

So, all caught up? Not quite, we also went to Foshan. Foshan is the city next to Guangzhou, and has a mere 7 million people. However, they make up for it by packing in a lot of history. Foshan is the home of Cantonese Opera, and much more of interest to me, the birthplace of Wing Chun Kung Fu. That includes Ip Man (Bruce Lee's teacher, and the recentish awesome movies about him with Donnie Yen) and Huang Feihong (Portrayed by Jet Li in Once Upon a Time in China). It seems they stuck both of these legends in a really cool looking shrine in the middle of town. While, as said previously, "you've seen one temple, you've seen 99%" holds true, this one was one of the nicer ones. It was very well maintained, full of very intricate designs and photo-worthy stuff.

Afterwards we found a really cool looking pedestrian sort of area, which seemed to be pretty closed on a Monday afternoon. A shame, because I bet at night that place is pretty awesome. It's a bit hiso, but it's full of bars and hidden restaurants that I'm sure the "in crowd" of Foshan know about. But after chilling out in a mall, that was about it for this trip to Foshan. It's actually linked to the GZ Metro (First city in the world to link their metro to another city's), so it's amazingly easy to get to, albeit a bit of a trek. There's lots more to see there, and I'm sure we'll be back. But for now, I think just relaxing and having a cold Walmart Great Value Beer (I also cannot believe they exist) unfortunately sounds alright too.