the chinese hike kicks the american

here in china there is a mountain known as yellow mountain, it is one of "the" places to visit in china ~ especially for chinese tourists. (it is like unto the grand canyon of the states.) as part of our time here we planned to do a trip to this area for a weekend. that was this past weekend. it looked like this -

~ 6 hours of driving in a mid-size bus with our tour guide (Mr. Ding) to yellow mtn from nanjing (no shocks on the bus, and very little freeway roads = jouncy 6 hours)
~ leave hotel at 8am next day for our trek (really 8:10am once all the students arrived - something that will be addressed soon.....)
~ drive fast and furious in another bus up a very windy drop-off kind of road to the trailhead - i only left permanent finger imprints on one of the seats in front of me.
~ wait for tickets to be purchased by our tour guide and then start the trek (see photo of instruction on how to hike the yellow mountain - i took special care to follow each one to the tee, esp the one about the monkeys)
~ hike/walk a million steep and windy stairs straight up a jungly mountain dripping sweat the whole time with 100s of other people coming and going both ways
~ arrive at the top 1.5 hours after the 1st students arrived, then follow the trails of stairs from one peak to the next (about 5 peaks) - another 100 million stairs up and down dripping sweat and trailing at the end of my group the whole day (each time i would finally arrive the tour guide would let me sit for about 10 minutes then get us all going again - finally at lunch i put my heels in and negotiated an extra 5 minutes)
~ viewed some of the most amazing mountainous sites i've ever seen (check out the photos although they don't quite tell it completely) yellow mountain is the standard mountain scenes depicted in chinese scroll art.
~ stop here and there and amaze and wonder all the chinese people on the trail with our ability to speak with them (and understand all of their comments about the 20 foreigners who are hiking around with them)
~ take 992 photos of the place and us and people
~ wonder at how anyone even built those stairs, and wonder even more about the coolies who carry loads and loads of wares and stuff up and down that mountain every day (see photos)
~ appreciate (when my heart rate lowered and i could see without sweat in my eyes) the beauty of God's creations
~ freak-out on several occasions as i watched my students get close to drop off cliffs
~ drink more water than i have at one time in years
~ finally! ride the cable tram down to the bus that sped back down the narrow windy road almost veering off cliffs or dropping into the ditch on the side of the road - this time i was a little too worn out to care about anything except for a shower and a bed.

we were all so beat by the time we arrived back at the hotel that even my strongest guys could hardly move. i think i burned about 6,456,098 calories in about 8 hours and 14 miles. unfortunately, it didn't melt away any stomach fat, just left me feeling as though i would never be able to live a healthy vibrant life again without sleeping and resting every 20 minutes.

now it's sunday nite and after lots of sleep and replenishment of calories i'm finally coming back to life. of course the students were back at it within 24 hours - oh to be in my early 20s again. being with them makes me feel a lot younger, but after this trek i feel very age appropriate.