Last night the train got back to Anyang a good two hours late. We arrived at 1:30am. We sat at one of the stops along the way for a long time. Apparently our engine had been given to another train, and we were waiting for a new one. Um, what? So we were chilling in the station with no engine for awhile. The train was turned off and it was stifling inside. But enough complaining. The really interesting part of the train ride was the people on it. The train was packed with the merchants who follow the torch from place to place selling t-shirts, flags, etc. There was very little room because they each had all of the stuff that they sold packed into big traveling bags, which were stuffed everywhere. It was really interesting to be traveling with that crowd. Our entire car was packed with people wearing various Beijing 2008 Olympic shirts, stickers, and pins. We were following the torch from Luoyang to Anyang along with them.
For the past few days I have been really irritated with the torch. Maybe that's a bit strong, but I'm not as excited as everyone else is. I thought it was annoying, because it made all of our travel plans complicated this weekend with streets that were closed off. On the train ride back from Luoyang, there was a period of about 2 hours where we thought we had nowhere to stay in Anyang, because the landlady was kicking us out out for the night (the cops were checking the hotels every 4 hours because of the torch). Everything ended up being fine, but in my mind it just seemed like a lot of inconvenience for a little bit of fire.
Pessimism, anyone?
But then this morning when I got to the school at 8:30am to teach, my translator Kitty brought me to a room on the first floor of the dormitories (I think it was an office) where all the kids were gathered around the TV, watching the torch pass through their city, completely mesmerized. We sat and watched the entire 2 hours of torch passing through Anyang (I was exhausted and very happy to watch the boob tube rather than teach about groceries in the supermarket). Seeing their facial expressions change between awe and smiles and they watched the TV completely changed my perspective on the torch. Nothing like the infamous Olympic torch ever comes to Anyang. This was incredibly, incredibly exciting for them and watching the TV with them this morning really made me realize that. I knew it before, but this morning it just clicked.
(After the torch, they were murder to teach. They complained and didn't want to do anything. It was actually kind of funny.)
On to pictures! I tried to make them as chronological as possible. I have many, many more (obviously) and it was hard to pick the best ones. Hopefully they aren't too repetitive. They start from last Thursday...
From my walk around the Old City of Anyang last Thursday. This is coming out of the heart of the Old City. The buildings are old and there is a pretty, old bridge, but just past these houses is the main shopping drag with loads of modern things. The juxtaposition is really something.
Also in Anyang's Old City. I'm a sucker for the bike-against-wall shot. Lame? Perhaps.
Again, Anyang's Old City. I. Love. These. Rob and I have agreed that they're great fun (well, no, he said "great craic," but I don't want to write that in here and get laughed at) so we now take them almost always instead of traditional taxis. They are so dangerous and so against any and all street codes in the west, so we have to use them here as much as we can. Helen calls them open taxis, the Luoyang group called them rickshaws. Take your pick.
The main street of Anyang's Old City.
This is an older photo, but it's still of Anyang's Old City. Remember when I was talking about the random temple and compound that was chilling in the Old City and the 26th great-grandson of this famous dude had the key and let us in and showed us around? Yeah, this is that. On my left is Helen's best friend, on my right is Helen's best friend's cousin (I'm really bad at remembering Chinese names).
The snack street that we went to late on Thursday night (I wrote about it before) in Anyang. This is just one of the stands, but you can get the idea of the variety and uniqueness of the food. This stand had pretty much everything you could think of on a stick. You pick which ones you want, then they fry the suckers up and put some sauce on them. Yum.
Ok, now we're on to the trip to Luoyang. This is the front building of their school. The campus is huge--it feels like college and it takes about 5 minutes to walk back to their teacher dormitories. And do you see that globe on the top of the building? Yeah, that's an observatory.
The Longmen Grottoes. There were carvings all over the mountains. Some were bigger than others. We powered through this site for sure... there wasn't much time, but we still managed to see everything. There were stairs all over the place to climb up and down and around to get the best views. I'm surprised that I'm still alive. It got really difficult in some places with my boot.
Me and Helen.
I like this shot because of the light.
No explanation necessary, I think. I didn't get bored of taking photos...
This is in the main, incredibly famous cave (or carving in the mountain... not entirely a cave). It used to be a temple. The size of the carvings are just incredible.
After Helen took this photo of me, some random Chinese men came over to me and asked to take their picture with me. At first I thought they wanted me to take their picture, but nope, they just wanted to get one in with the tall westerner. Good times. 
A view up the mountain while walking on the ground. There were so many nooks and crannies... I wish we had more time to look.
This is at the main entrance to the walk to get to the Shaolin Temple. These were all the Orbis kids that I traveled around with that day. From left to right we have Kate, Joey, Antione (is that the right spelling?), me, Danielle, and Emer. Emer is the only Irish one (just in case her name didn't give that away).
I know I'm not in this picture, but I love it. Danielle, Kate, Joey, and Antione. Still at the main entrance at Shaolin.
One of the many shots I took in the actual Shaolin Temple. It was very touristy and I didn't take many photos with people, but there were tons of buildings within the temple grounds. It was really beautiful.
Helen and her brother outside of the main entrance of the Shaolin Temple. They were both really, really excited to be there and see the Kung Fu demo (which was AWESOME).
I forget what this place was called, which is lame. It was a little walk past the Shaolin Temple. The Pagoda Forest? Something like that. These are all gravestones erected back in the day (Tang dynasty, I think?).
The mountains were really beautiful. Driving up into the mountains from the Grottoes, the pollution was incredible. We couldn't see any of the mountains, even the ones closest to us. But once we got to these pagodas, it *almost* cleared up for a little while! There were a few patches of blue sky and we could actually sort of see the mountains!
On the walk out of the Shaolin Temple area (it's really spread out inside), we saw these kids (all ages) practicing Kung Fu. It was really impressive. (We also saw a professional Kung Fu show, which was totally unbelievable. I flinched a lot of the time.) Helen said that these kids in the picture go to a special Kung Fu school. Their red uniforms against the green mountains was beautiful. 
The next day, Sunday, in Luoyang's Old City. Helen and I went into this shop. It was owned by a family and we made friends with them quickly. The son was 21, and he and his parents were all very, very nice. This is what the father made for me, and that's the mother and son holding it out to dry. I know there's horrible back lighting in this picture, but I like it anyway.
Walking along the main road in Luoyang's Old City.
And, last but not least, Sunday lunch! We ate in a little hole-in-the-wall place in the Old City. That's baozi (yum, yum, yum!) on the left and right. In the middle is a soupy thing that is unique to Luoyang. Helen had never had it before, so it was fun to try... and hey, adding fried things to a dish never hurt!Just a few more things:
1) Mike and Sam, two of the teachers in Zhengzhou, are coming to Anyang today(!!!) with their RC, Sophie (one of Helen's friends) and leaving tomorrow night. It will be really nice to have them here. I was surprised how excited I got at the prospect of being able to show them around our school, the city, etc.
2) Hank, one of the Orbis directors, just sent us this article about the torch in Henan province. It's interesting, so I'm sharing: http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2008/jul/28/olympicgames2008.china
3) Orbis gave the school English books that are too hard for nearly everyone. Today I pulled them out and arranged to meet with the 4 older ones in the class who have good English. We're going to talk about some of the stories in the book so that they can practice their speaking. It should be good.
That's all, folks!
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