Xiamen

T and Hud the husky

Ferry to Gulangyu island

art made of fish bones

This photo is for T's mom who plays the organ. This was a museum- of huge and tiny organs. A staff came to play one of them.

View from tram to peak from bird sanctuary. SOme roofs had plants arranged to spell things.

This is the garden where the 12 grottos are. Its twelve "caves"- one for each zodiac animal. It built into a hill, with concrete steps and narrow pasasgeways- a bit scary since the sun was setting as we ventured through. What the sign should've said was: "Big rock maze through tunnels and caves. Takes 30 minutes at least and bring a snack"

The beach and bridge thing valve that let water into the garden area.

hello!

For Qingming_Festival holiday we worked saturday and got Sun-tuesday off. (its common for the Gov't to mandate working on a weekend in order to give a weekday off) We flew to Xiamen, on the coast of the Fujian province map Saturday night and got in to our hotel after midnight. This was after we found out that our pre-booked hotel was 2 hrs away and no car would take us so we had to re-book in an instant. We spend sunday hanging out with an American friend of ours who owns a factory and has the cutest husky puppy named Hudson Rex! I got to sit in the back seat with him throughout our day of driving around the city.

After a leisurely brunch and drive, we got a personal tour of his factory- pretty awesome. They make picture frames and stuff with university logos on them.

That evening T and I walked the neighborhood - lots of stores were open late- nearly everywhere. (Usually in shanghai its just the main streets. It reminded me of Hong Kong. The next day we took the ferry to Gulangyuan island of things to explore. Touristy things. Organ museum, fish bone art museum, piano, and calligraphy carving things. There was also a TON of people- even though it was cloudy and chilly. I had imagined lounging on the beach.... but we ended up doing a fair amount of hiking and eating.

Since I'm composing this in email via "instablog" I can't caption the photos. sorry!

-The fish bone art was pretty impressive- this taiwainese guy who was balding with really long hair preserves the bones then glues them together to form really organic looking sculptures. meticulous!!
-The puppy bit Timon's toes and was chewing on my sleeve thru his cage.

We had a great time, tho we hadn't counted on there being so many people on Gulangyu. There were many quaint/modern/cute boutique hotels there we hope to stay on *next* time we go.

ciao! k