Living - exploration leads to inspiration

School was officially over January 9. My teachers were really free after Friday the 6th, but I had some "stuff" to wrap up...which I semi-successfully completed that by 10am on the 9th...After taking care of the necessities I ran to my apartment to grab my things and join up with Ryan for a trip to Li Jiang and Shangri La. Up till now, for a variety of reasons I hadn't done any research on either, other than asking Ryan for some basic details, like, "will I need shorts or Long Johns and jeans?" Indeed it was the latter that would be necessary.

We paid a few hundred US dollars to fly to Li Jiang. We booked an Inn through agoda.com in the old town.
When we arrived in old town...a place of small streets that have no logical order...we failed to find our Inn. So we booked another place. Of course in this freezing area of China there is no real insulation and absolutely no heating in any Inns. I suppose we were lucky to get one that had hot water and a normal toilet (Ryan refused to use a squat pot).

Day 2: was spent on a tour going to Jade Snow Mountain and visiting some locals who performed a very thought out show for us. They gave us these dispensable canisters of oxygen. It's true...at 4,500+ meters the air gets a little thin...and they are bringing up all sorts of people, young and old.

Day 3 & 4: was traveling to Shangri-La and seeing some Tibetan buildings and culture. We visited the large and very impressive Shangri-La temple sight. Most of the people on our bus opted to not see the temple...which is odd, because that was the main reason why we came, and it's the most interesting thing by far there. On the morning of day 4 we awoke at 6:30AM in order to catch our 7:00AM breakfast and 7:45AM departure...ya, well no one was awake. Alas at about 7:30AM we left to go walking and explore. We found some yummy breakfast burrito things. It's hard to describe in Chinese let along English, but basically it was a rice tortilla shell with some gluten inside and a variety of spices and oils.

Day 5: included a foot massage, further exploration of Old Town and a lovely brunch with fantastic French Toast (and that's saying something, because that kind of stuff isn't easy to find in Hot Pot country).