After a few days of down time, my friend Lindsey and her sister, Courtney, got into town! They had spent the previous week exploring Beijing and Xi'an, and it was a lot of fun introducing them to my corner of China. We ate at all my favorite restaurants, finally got to the Gansu provincial museum (not too shabby), visited the DVD market twice (making Ben and Lindsey very happy), hiked a Buddhist hill & sipped delicious Eight Treasure tea at the top, and generally enjoyed all that Lanzhou has to offer. Check out Lindsey's great blog. Prize for most exciting part was when Ben found a scorpion... in his pants.
Good times aside, I also had to make some final goodbyes. Some of my co-workers took us out to a great dinner, as they have so many times in the past. There were photos and farewells with the mending lady. Thank yous to the families who run the restaurants and shops in my neighborhood. Hugs and goodlucks for my sitemate. A seeing off by our dear friend, Lu Wei, which left me in tears as we headed for the train station.
After a pretty pleasant, if slighty sticky, train ride to Chengdu, we arrived in time to take care of a little business at the Peace Corps office and enjoy a big Tex-Mex dinner at PCV's perennial favorite, Pete's. The next day we were up EARLY on our way to Leshan , home of the biggest Buddha in the world! It's sheer mass and gravity drew the eyes, and it only became more impressive as we descended the cliff alongside him. Below is the big guy himself.
Getting back to Chengdu was a little arduous as we found ourselves at a park exit in the middle of nowhere, populated entirely by touts, but we made it finally, and were able to share dinner with Beth, a fun and fiesty older volunteer who is Ben's replacement at his PC site in Dingxi.
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