It was a 2 hour bus ride to LeShan from Chengdu on Thursday morning (very early in the morning). We stood in line for THREE HOURS to finally get to see the Giant Buddha and climb down from the top to the bottom. We had no idea it would be that long of a wait when we stepped into line. Somehow we entertained ourselves during the long wait...and the nationals around us sure got a kick out of 1) staring at us and 2) "discreetly" taking pictures of us. Do I really look THAT strange in comparison with asians? (insert rhetorical "no" so as to stop any sarcastic thoughts you are thinking right now).
This statue is one of the largest in the world. (Anyone know which ones are larger? We had quite the discussion about that during our three hour wait and only came up with the Sphinx).  It was definitely amazing to see how large it is in person and to stand at the bottom and wonder how they carved that into the mountain. It took like 90 years, I think. Pretty intense. It's always interesting to see people burning incense at places like this as a way of sacrifice and prayer to buddha. It's a reminder that a lot of people follow this religion here and don't have the hope that I have...                                                        

In other news, we went to an ancient village on Friday and it wasn't really as interesting as everyone else had hoped because of how touristy it's become. But I really thought this place was beautiful. It had to aqueduct-type things on either side of the village road that carried water through the village. The ancient architecture was beautiful. This place has become a bit ruined and certainly a tourist trap complete with carnival games and bumper cars (I'm not kidding!). It's sad that the country does stuff like that because it's so interesting naturally. There wasn't much to do here except shop and eat so this trip only lasted a few hours.

The train ride home was wonderful in comparison to the train ride there. We were still on hard seats the whole 27 hours, but as you can see...we were surrounded by each other and not drunk/smoking chinese men. This was in the first two minutes of the train ride when we were all excited about how empty the train was. These smiles didn't last all through the night. I think I did get more sleep on the way home but it's hard to sleep when you're kinda squished and when you're sitting on a hard seat. The other funny thing about the trip home was the four of us had on our CTF shirts so we matched. We must've confused some of the nationals that already think all foreigners look alike.

I put some more pictures up on my photo album today! This weekend is team leader summit in Beijing so I will be away from my team for the first time and hopefully they will survive the two teaching days without me! Hopefully they don't get asked to do anything crazy...and if they do, hopefully they use the "I need to ask my team leader" cop-out. We'll see how it goes. This is the little trial-run for when I leave for a week in November for Eric's wedding and they have to survive without me!