It's been three weeks of non stop moving around! Actually I've been moving around since May and now I'm finally back to Atlanta. Now I just have to move into my new dorm but it feels nice thinking I'll be in one place for a while. Now I feel like I need a vacation from my vacations :P I'm not too eager to start classes just yet. Thankfully I still have one week left.
So where did I stop writing? While touring around China, our schedule was full from early morning to late night that's why I say now I need a vacation from my vacations :P I think I got more hours of sleep when in class.
I still have to write about Wuxi and Nanjing but I'll save it for later. After staying one day in Huangzhan (Yellow Mountain) we went to:
Zhouzhang: known to be one of the happiest cities to live in China. This city has one of the highest life expectancies. Our tour guide said it's because Zhouzhang people know to work hard but also play hard. 
Hangzhou: famous for its Longjing (Dragonwell) green tea, we visited the fields and learned about green tea's numerous health benefits. The tea is mostly produced by hand so it can be very expensive depending on the quality. 
After Hangzhou we returned to Shanghai in the afternoon. Early morning the next day we took a flight to Beijing. We were not too lucky in Beijing, the weather was against us. We spent three days there and most of the time it was raining. My brother and I also caught a cold and were sick half of the time. I revisited some of the places I had already been to and some new places as well, among them the summer palace, forbidden city, the temple of heaven, Ming tombs and the great wall. This time I got to see a more touristy area of the wall where the walls had been restored. To get to there we took a lift, to go down you had the option to ride the lift again or slide. Yes, slide down the great wall!! Unfortunately it was closed due to the weather :'(((( It would have been awesome if we could have done that. 
Our last stop before leaving mainland China was Zhongshan. This city is not a frequent tourist destination but we visited because it was the hometown of my great grandparents. For some reason, I expected a small town/village but Zhongshan was a very large modern city. It felt strange thinking my ancestors lived there. Zhongshan was also Sun Yat Sen's hometown. When he died he had two tombs. Because in that time Nanjing was the capital city of the empire, his clothes and personal belongings were buried in Nanjing. We visited the memorial when we were there for a day. However, because Zhongshan was his hometown he also requested his body be buried there. So in Zhonshan we also visited his memorial. Sun Yat Sen seems to have been a very bright mind! After that we visited a famous almond/green bean cookie factory that’s been famous for over 100 years. To this date, the cookies are still all hand made.
Our next stop was Macau. It was so odd in the beginning seeing all the signs in Portuguese/English/Cantonese. I had no idea what language to speak. The good thing was that Portuguese is very similar to Spanish so getting lost was not an issue. Afterwards some relatives we met told us that although Portuguese was one of the official languages, only a very small percentage of the population actually knew how to speak it. The great majority spoke Cantonese. In Macau we visited the many Vegas replicas hotels and casinos and the old parts of town. We also went to an Ice World exhibition at the Venetian. The temperature was -8 degrees. Although they provided coats, it was freezing inside by the end I could barely feel my toes. My camera's lens was frozen for two hours afterwards.
Our trip came to an end in Hong Kong where we stayed for five days. This was the place I was most looking forward to visit not only because I was eager to meet all my relatives but also because I had heard so many good things. Many of my friends from GT who went said HK had been one of the best parts of their trip. From Macau to HK we took the ferry which took about an hour. Then we checked in our hotel and that same afternoon we had a family reunion. I didn't know I had so much family in HK, I heard so many interesting stories and learned many more Chinese customs and traditions. The rest of the week we had a tight schedule since many had invited us for lunch or dinner. Even though we stayed for five days, our days fell short. What I loved the most about HK was how it had a little bit of both the East and the West. It was just the right combination. Of all the cities we visited, if I had to pick one to live in, it would be HK without a doubt.
I'm so incredibly grateful for having had the opportunity to visit China and travel so much. It's been an amazing experience learning about such a different country. But now it's back to work! Fall semester, here I come!
well that was a long post, the product of 15 hours sitting in an airplane…
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