Guilin

5 days and counting until we meet Lucy!  We are so excited to meet her and are grateful to have this fantastic opportunity to learn about her culture and China.

Today we were in Guilin which is considered a small town by Chinese standards, with 700,000 people.  We spent the day on the Li River.  This town was gorgeous with limestone hills sprouting up all over the country side. 

Many of the Chinese people are excited to practice their ability to speak English.  Today I had a young guy and his girlfriend approach me and asked me to sit with them for awhile so he could practice his language skills.  In China, the students are required to learn English starting in Kindergarten.  I found his eagerness to be sweet and humbling. 

We took a bamboo raft down the river and watched the fisherman go cormorant fishing.  This type of fishing has been used amongst the Chinese fisherman for several hundred years.  They tie a string around the cormorants neck so they are unable to swallow the fish and the fisherman sends the bird into the water to catch the fish.  When a fish is caught, the cormorant returns to the boat and the fisherman takes the prize.  I am pretty sure that PETA would have a field day with this, but the history and tradition around this community was captivating.  It didn’t hurt that I was sharing the raft with a German Hottie either!