January 15- "This is like a big amusement park for me!"

What we climbed down

This morning we left for Leshan to see the giant Buddha carved into the side of a mountain. I saw the Leshan Giant Buddha my sophomore year so I wasn't as excited as Henry.

You know when you do something that scares you, you say "I'll never have to do this again". Yeah well... I did the Leshan Giant Buddha again. Doesn't sound scary, I know. The scary point is walking down the stairs on the side of the mountain. Once was enough for me, I thought. However, this second time was great because there were no crowds! There were maybe 10 other people around when we got the bottom of the Giant Buddha.

When we first got to Leshan, Henry, as a religion major, said, "This is awesome. This is like a giant amusement park for me! We'll save the giant Buddha for the grand finale."

And that we did... I got to see parts of Leshan I didn't see the first time so that was cool. I did skip the million steps up to one of the temples though. I felt like I'd seen enough temples by that point to forego one.

After the Buddha we ended up in this cool fishing village where we had an awesome lunch and hung out for a couple of hours to kill some time. During that time I "sewed" the whole in my jacket that I created by wearing too many layers. A Chinese lady came over to me and gave me a thumbs up. I think it was just an encouraging thumbs up because it looked terrible. I wish she had offered to do it!

After lunch we got bombarded by these biker dudes who insisted on giving us a ride to the east gate of Leshan. They told us by bike it was 15 minutes. Liars. It was 5 and the whole time he kept saying, "I have lao wai". And everyone starred at us. We felt like the lazy, fat Americans everyone stereotypes us as.

We took the 5:00 bus to Emeishan. Our next stop on our adventure. Thankfully the bus ride was only an hour.

Tonight we stayed at the Teddy Bear Hostel. The lady at the front desk was extremely nice and gave us great advice for our hike up Emeishan to the golden summit. Originally we were only staying for a day and a half but Henry was easily convinced to hike all the way up, which would take two days and then take a bus down. I on the other hand wanted to either hike up the road (no stairs) or take a bus up and take a bus down. I definitely had no idea what I was getting myself into.

I don't know if I've explained this before but hiking in China usually means walking up and down stairs. Needless to say Henry convinced me to do the two-day hike. I immediately lost my appetite and became super anxious. 10 hours of hiking up stairs the first day and 6 the next... No way did I think I could do it. And our ascent was 2577m! We start at 500m and the top is 3077m but we take a cable car up the very last part. Which I of course insisted on because that was the steepest ascent.

Wonder wear we are staying in the mountains? I guess I should start by telling you that Emeishan is one of the holiest mountains. Shan= mountain. So in English it's called Mt. Emei.  The mountain has a ton of monasteries on it. Most of the monasteries have rooms where they allow hikers to sleep for the night, of course at a cost.

So here goes nothing.... Taking on Emeishan for the next two days!

I CAN DO IT.