The Story continues.....

I guess I tried to add too many things onto my last blog and it wouldn't save it all so here is a continuation of our trip.  The next place we went to was a leaning pagoda.  Every city has at least one pagoda.  Pagodas were used by the Buddhists to store their scriptures.  They are usually towers that are several stories tall.  I know of 2 that are in Xi'an.  This pagoda leans and is referred to as the Pisa of China.  It isn't as obviously leaning, though, as much as the tower of Pisa.

 Then we were off to another garden.  As beautiful as they all are, after awhile they all start looking the same.

I loved this shot.  I thought it was gorgeous.  The stream, the people, the rocks, the greenery.  It just all came together in beauty. The area below, the people were just lounging around and enjoying the quiet.  So of course, Kim decided to  join them. 

And then the highlight of our trip.  As we were sitting on this bench waiting for the rest of our group to show up so we could leave, this young girl came up to us and asked if she could talk to us for awhile.  She is only 15 years old, I thought she was much older, and she had come to the gardens with her father and little sister so she could find foreigners and speak English to them.  Her English was really good.  She wants to go to America some day and study.  That is the dream of many Chinese students.  In any case, we talked for a while, she added us to wechat and then we gave her an English name, since she didn't have one.  Most students that are really interested in English will have an English name.  We asked what her Chinese name was and I couldn't tell you what it was or is but it sounded somewhat like Jes or Jas. So after talking about some English names that sound similar like Jessie, or Jessica we decided she should use Jasmine as her English name.  I don't know if she'll keep it or not, but for us we refer to her as Jasmine.  She was a really cute girl and I hope she gets her dream to one day be able to study in America.

This is Bobby, our fearless tour guide.  He was great.  And most of our group.  We had a wonderful group of people we were traveling with.  Seven of us from Xi'an and five from Guanzho, all with the China Teacher's Program.

 That night we had dinner on our own.  We all opted to go western.  Sometimes you just want a taste of home.  Papa Johns tasted pretty good.  And even Bobbie ate with us.  He never eats with us when our tour pays for the meal.  He gets us seated and he disappears until we are finished eating.  But not this night.  He ordered some pasta and sat down and ate with us.  It was great.

On our walk home we found these artificial tulips with lights in them.  China's good with flowers, artificial and real.

The next day we went to a silk factory.  It was so interesting.  There is an old man who sat outside of the gate at our old campus last year, and sold silk worms.  I guess children like to buy them for "pets."  He also sold cocoons.  I bought a few to take home to my grandchildren.  I've seen him there just recently again this year.  I guess it's silk worm season. They only eat mulberry leaves and you have to kill the larvae before it chews it's way out as a moth.  Once it's chewed a hole in the cocoon, the silk is worthless because the thread--which is one VERY LONG single thread, is broken and no good.

 Here they have to sort and check the cocoons for any that have wholes in them.  Some of them are doubles--they have two worms in them--you can tell because they are much bigger and they sort them out and use them differently.

After sorting out the bad, they boil the good ones so they can find the end of their thread.  They combine 8 threads together and weave them together to make one thicker and stronger strand and thread it onto a spool.

 The many faces of Bobbie.  He's 30 and he's single! 😄  We had a great trip.  Mad some new friends.  Got to know people in our branch better.  It was wonderful.