As you On the 9th of September I went off to Northern Ireland to see my good friend Paul, who I know from university. Julia and Rachael, two other friends went too, and we all had a mad week crammed with lots of cool things, so I thought that I’d tell you about it. I wrote this post ages ago, but forgot to publish it, so here it is anyway
One of my favourite aspects of the trip was the incredible scenery that we saw. We made frequent visits to the coast, making the most of being situated a short drive from the sea. Much of the cliffs and rock formations were formed from volcanic activity a long time ago, and they have left magnificant formations all around.
Every time I go back to Ireland, I am always struck by the beauty of the land, something which I took for granted when I lived there. The amount of rain makes all the fields a vibrant green, almost too green! The coast line that we walked along was rugged looking and wild. There are many impressive cliffs and jutting out of the sea are magnificant rocks with archways and all sorts! Whenever I am in a place like that I become like a child and get really excited! Climbing everywhere was so fun and looking at the beauty made we wonder about God’s power and wisdom in creating it all. We spent some time just sitting down and watching the waves crashing against the rocks. I love the sea. Have you ever heard of the Giant’s causeway? That is one of the places which we visited. It is famous for its peculiar rock formations. The rocks there are hexagonal forming thousands of stepping stones out to the sea. It’s really magnificant. Take a look for yourself: http://www.northantrim.com/giantscauseway.htm
While we were there we were taught how to surf by a proffessional surfer (it’s harder than it looks!). We also spent some time offroading on bog-land with my friend’s landrovers, something which made normal driving look incredibly boring! One of the landrovers got stuck in the mud and it took 5 hours for Paul’s brothers to get it out again, but they enjoyed it and came back at the end of the day completely caked in mud from head to toe! Paul ’s cousin came up with his shotgun and a box full of ammunition for us to use to shoot clay pidgeons (pottery discs fired into the air). That was so much fun, and by the end I was getting used to it and hitting them pretty regularly.
Here is a video of our time. Sorry it is poor video quality:
Hi，
It was a long time since we hear from each other in the net. Also I have’t post here for a long time.Anyway,new year is coming,hope everything goes well…
Things in my school is very busy,I have prepared for many kinds of test.Now I have a three days holiday for the begining of a new year,and I came back on Dec.31st.Tomorrow I will back to school again,then I will be in a final exam period(a month).
I am glad to see your post about your wonderful Christmas.Thank you.*^_^* Everything sounds very well.In my childhood I was eager to experience a real Christmas.So it is now. It’s you who let me feel so warm.I never think that I will be so closely with a real Christmas.I know more about your way to celebration Christmas.The meal seems delicious wahaha…
Christmas smell is more and more deep in China,christmas trees every where,post cards,a big stock,and so on.However I also can’t find the real feeling of it.This Christmas day also a little specail to me .The happiest thing is I have made my presents for you arrived on time. (:P) Anymore,I have watched a beautiful fireworks nearby.So romatic..I like it.Also,my roomates and I have a big meal.To my surprise,my best friend in HongKong called me at the last minute of the Christmas Eve.I was couting down with her(and the ones around her)…so funny.This is our easy way to feel the Christmas.
Hope everyone do the best in the final exams~~~Let’s look forward our Spring festival….
We have talked about this trip for a long time.And there was many problems before we went.But luckily,we have all sloved them,and began our happy time then.
We spent most of our first day on the train. It’s nearly 8 hours.Of course,we played cards to kill time.:)When we arrived,we were given good entertainment from one of my university classmate(he is living in there).And he also was our guider for this trip.Everything was well.
The second day,we all got up early to climb the high mountain. It was about 8:30a.m when we reached the entrance of Jiuhua mountain.It was a sunny day,and very very hot.Then we began to walk to the top of the mountain. It’s really very high,we spent about 7hours clibming ,resting and clibming resting again.(It’s a long long journey…)
It was very cool on the top,,,and have a very good sight.Look at the pictures.
That tired day,we didn’t do something to kill time in the hotel. Instead,I got to bed early,and talked with my close friend so much…
Because Jiuhua mountain is very near from my university city (Wuhu),so I brought my frieds to the city. It took us 2hours by bus. Wuhu is not a big city, and not as modern as Hangzhou. It just a quiet city. My friends have never come to this place before,so I was acting a guider to show them around the small city(I am not a good guider, the same to this time. I am not good at direction. )But, luckily,we were all very tired,and didn’t want to walk a lot.So we find a net bar, having a relax time there,also special. And during the afternoon,I also meet one of my university friends who was living in Wuhu. He was very amazing to my suddenly coming.Haha,,,,really very happy.
Time goes quickly,specially happy time.I always say this words.But it’s really true. It was time for us go home ,the day. Getting up early again that morning. Going with our train,,,,Hangzhou,,,we were coming back~~~This time we didn’t play cards in the train.We all sleeping all the way home.We were really tired this time I think.:)
Writing down the unforgotten days,sharing the enjoy time with you~~~This is my first post in our blog.haha~~~~
This week has been packed with cool stuff. Last Wednesday was my mother’s 50th birthday, so we all tried to make the time as special as we could. My father arranged a delicious meal for her and invited some surprise guests. It was wonderful to see her face when they arrived! Gerrard, Ulreke and the boys have been close friends of my family for many years and even during the time that we were living in Ireland (before 1995). That evening Peter, the boys and I all went off to the Roaches with their friend’s dog, Rusty.
Stoke-on-Trent is set within some very beautiful countryside and it doesn’t take long to get out of the city, which is a real blessing. Just north of where we live is the Peak District, a national park with beautiful hills and lakes. This is where the area of the Roaches is, and is probably my favourite place to go to in England. They are rugged looking, with rocky outcrops, impressive cliffs and pretty fields, full with heather. It looks down upon Rudyard Lake and Stoke-on-Trent lies discretely in the distance, far enough away to not cause a blot on the landscape. We enjoyed climbing the rocks up to the highest point and watching the sun set behind the hills, bathing the cliffs in a beautiful orange glow. That time was very special and it was a shame to say goodbye to the family the following day. We will miss them
On Saturday I went with Peter and my friend Jim on a unicycle ride in a nearby park. This was the first time for a long while that we have gone on a ride together, so it was very cool. We enjoy riding in the woods on bumpy paths and whenever we see a dangerous hill, we ride down it and see if we can reach the bottom without falling off. By the end of the ride I was caked in mud and my coat was ripped, but it was worth it! Here’s Peter riding down the hill (turn your speakers on).
Monday morning was quite interesting as I was asked to look after Laura (5), Emma (2) and Esther (baby/wa), for a few hours, while their parents were away. I have never had any experience with babysitting, so I was a bit anxious, especially as they are so young. The kids are great fun though, and everyone was still ok when their mother returned which, believe me, was a big relief! At one point the baby started crying upstairs, so I left Laura and Emma to play with their toys as I checked up on Esther. My mother had given me tips on what to do if the baby cried and I tried everything. Nothing worked. Just then I heard Emma crying downstairs, so I left Esther for a bit and went to see what the problem was. Laura had got the comb that she wanted. I looked across at Laura and she was trying to comb her hair. Suddenly she picked up a pair of scissors and attempted to chop a big chunk out of her hair! I stopped her just before she did it and when I asked her why she tried, she said “my hair is tangled”. I can only imagine what her mother would have said if Laura had succeeded!
In the evening, Ally, Peter and I all drove off to the roaches again, and enjoyed the sunset ….AGAIN! That must be the third time that we had been there in the space of a week, but I never get bored of the place. I took a panorama from one of the hills, but as I was browsing through the pictures later, I deleted the last picture by mistake. Ally was not very happy, and he reminded me of the fact that I am always doing silly things like that. I deleted the final picture of the Lei Feng pagoda panorama whilst in Hangzhou, and worst of all, the video of Gillian and I doing silly dances in the aisle of the plane on the way back from Chengdu! D’oh! Ally still hasn’t forgiven me for that one….
Yesterday, we took the day out and we drove up to Leeds (north east of Manchester) to watch England pay Pakistan on the final day of a cricket test match. There were so many people there and it reminded me a bit of China! We spent most of our time queuing in the car, in lines of people or waiting for public transport. However, the game was excellent and England thrashed Pakistan getting all their players out for only 155 runs (points). That was…good! J Take a look at the SWEET panorama that Peter took (note the ‘twins’ on the right side of the picture carrying beers up the steps J):
I’m sure that that has inspired you to go out play a game of cricket. It has for me! See you later!
Hangzhou was the first Chinese city that either of us had visited and our impressions and memories of the city are especially piquant. In some respects it is not easy to distinguish our impressions of Hangzhou in particular from our impressions of China in general. The distinctive charm of the city only began to become apparent to us once we had visited other areas of the country.
Prior to coming to Hangzhou, neither of us knew very much about the city. Mark had seen some pictures of Xi Hu from a friend’s visit to the city and had been struck by its beauty. As our reasons for visiting Hangzhou were not primarily those of tourists, we were more than pleasantly surprised by the remarkable loveliness of the city. Half expecting the dull drabness of a modern city, we had not anticipated the colourful gardens, parks and hillsides. Nor had we expected the wealth of historical interest that we discovered in the older buildings and streets and in the fine Zhejiang Provincial Museum.
Our favourite part of Hangzhou was probably Xi Hu and its surroundings. We spent a number of days exploring the lake and some of the sites around it. During our stay, we took a boat trip on the lake and visited some of the lake’s islands. It was wonderful to see so much beauty in the centre of a modern city. On the same day as we took the boat trip, we went to the top of Leifeng Pagoda, from which we were able to look out over the lake. Later on in our stay we also had the opportunity to visit Cheng Huang, from which we enjoyed a marvellous panorama of the whole of the city and the surrounding hills. We were quite surprised to discover that both of those buildings had only been rebuilt in recent years. One usually expects such buildings to come from an age other than our own. The buildings did not merely possess an imposing exterior; the artworks that they contained were equally worth the visit.
Much of our time was spent in various parks and gardens within the city. We especially enjoyed Liu Lang Wen Ying and the Hangzhou Flower Nursery, which both had outstanding displays of natural beauty. After visiting the Flower Nursery we went on to Guo’s Villa, which was wonderfully serene and peaceful. The villa and its gardens were quite unlike anything we had ever seen in Europe or America.
So much of what we witnessed in Hangzhou was totally new or foreign to us. Perhaps one of the strangest things for us coming to China was adjusting to the life of the Chinese streets. The rules of the road that we were accustomed to in Britain no longer seemed to apply. The car horn, which is seldom used in Britain, seemed to be used quite regularly. Crossing the road was also always an experience; one was never quite sure if the cars would stop for you! We were further surprised to see how lively the streets were. In Britain most shops close at about 5:30pm, so it was interesting to see so many people on the streets in the evening in the streets around our hotel. Exploring the various streets was a lot of fun.
The housing in the city was one of the first things that struck us. It was quite different from the housing in most British cities. In Britain most people live in separate houses, rather than in flats (with the recent trend being towards detached and semi-detached rather than terraced housing). In places within the city we were also able to see a degree of poverty that we had never seen before, something that was all the more stark when it was seen in the light of the many signs of economic progress and new wealth in the city. We began to become more aware of the affluence of our own society.
Qinghefang Old Street was one of the first places that we visited in Hangzhou and we also revisited it on our last full day in the city. The liveliness and colour of the street made it one of the highlights of our time in Hangzhou. The various stores offered a wealth of diversions and exotic wares; it was especially fascinating to watch some of the craftsmen at work. Qinghefang Old Street was the first place where we had to get used to bartering. In Britain one rarely barters for goods as one seldom finds items without a set price. Bartering made the acts of buying and selling into a sort of game, a game which we grew to enjoy, although I get the feeling that we generally ended up as the losing party!
On our first trip to Qinghefang Old Street we sampled some of the various foods on offer in the snack street. The English descriptions of the foods on offer in the various stalls were extremely helpful as we would have been utterly incapable of identifying many of the foods without them. We tasted rabbit’s head and frogs’ legs for the first time and enjoyed a few more familiar dishes.
During our stay in Hangzhou we had the opportunity to try many different types of Chinese food and also to sample some local delicacies, such as vinegar fish and Song soup. The chance to experience so many new foods was one of the most exciting things about our trip. In virtually all the countries that we had visited before coming to China, the food that we tasted was quite familiar to us, so the rich variety of new tastes in China added an exciting new dimension to our holiday. Seeing so many familiar international brands and fast food restaurants was also a strange experience. The fact that KFC and McDonald’s food tastes the same the world over seemed strange to us when we considered that almost all of the other food that we were tasting was so new to us. The predictability of fast food had never seemed so boring!
Despite the many interesting sights that we saw, the thing that we will most remember Hangzhou for is the warmth of the welcome that we received from the many people that we met. The hospitality that we received and the many friends that we made served to make the time that we spent at Hangzhou particularly memorable.
Have you ever heard of the Giant’s causeway? That is one of the places which we visited. It is famous for its peculiar rock formations. The rocks there are hexagonal forming thousands of stepping stones out to the sea. It’s really magnificant. Take a look for yourself: http://www.northantrim.com/giantscauseway.htm
