VIEWING THE COUNTRY SIDE!!!

Today we went to see the country side! Wow! What an experience! I am so humbled by this experience. I feel like I have learned what it is like to live simple. I now know how rich we are in America. I have always been tired of hearing Americans complain about the recession and all, but now I am just disgusted by the Americans who think they don’t have enough. The Chinese people live in such humble accomodations. The countryside is beautiful. I just fell in love with the view. It was amazing how as you travelled everything changed so quickly. Every inch of land is used for vegetation. The houses are small brick squares. If I ever go to complain about my house I want to remember the people here and just be thankful for the amazing home God has blessed me with.
We stopped to walk around a village and see some of the homes, an old school (which says on the side something about no matter how poor we are our kids still need a place to learn). There is an old basketball hoop in the background of one of the pictures. After we were all tired from walking we got back in the van and went to a lake. We were skipping rocks, finding sea shells, and climbing trees. All the pictures below have a small caption about each. I took over 200 pictures, not all are good though. I also need to get the pictures from Tessie that she took on her camera. Later I will make a movie with all the good ones, but for now here are several to give you an idea what it was like.



All of us in the van - Jason and the driver were up front

Inside the old school there were still signs on the wall, there was even a black board


See the basketball hoop in the background?


An old abandoned house


The beautiful mountains

Scenery


A house where someone has their laundry out to dry


Dillon and I hiking along


A beautiful temple that we could see on a mountain side

skipping rocks at the lake - my best one was 5 jumps! Jay just had fun throwing them into the water

Grandma, Jay and I at the lake (Dillon was resting in the van after his big adventure hiking)

I climbed a tree to get a picture for Josiah! :o)

Of course Jay wanted up with me!

Being silly with Grandma

Driving along...this is what all the stores looked like

This was the newest apartment complex I saw.

Jay was SO well behaved on this trip! He sat on Grandma's lap the whole time (except when he rode up front with Jason) He was WONDERFUL! If he is this good on Saturday when we come home - that would be GREAT!

Thank you Jason for taking your day off to go with us and teach us about China!! We learned a lot on this trip. It was something I don’t think I will ever forget. I am so glad while we were in China we got to see a big city as well as the country life.