Funny Story

I just saw Cally in her wedding dress and I cried. She picked it up today and sent me a picture. I have to start with a funny story from last night. They have paid for all our meals, until last night. So several people gathered at an outdoor place around the square. Mellisa and Amy ordered fried shrimp and onion rings. You should have seen their faces when this plate full of shrimp arrived. They were the size of houseflies, but they had huge black eyes. They were wild river shrimp and they lived up to their name of shrimp. Another night three girls ordered pizza a 24 in. Well it was 24 in around. smaller than a salad plate. On to today. First off remember my spelling is bad when I am not in a hurry and tired, but I'm both all the time on this trip. Today set a record for the best day. We faced a 7 hour bus ride through the Himalayas. The road was narrow, winding, steep with small guard rails. There were hundreds of buses on this road to Shangri la. We could see why right from the begininng. It was the most beautiful sceneryI've ever seen. My pictures won't do it justice. I didn't want to close my eyes and miss a thing. I tried to take it all in. The terraces where they farm were perfect and all done by hand. Their fields were artwork. People were working with their baskets on their backs. Yaks, cows, pigs, sheep and goats were roaming and they were herding them. So many different styles of homes. One stop was the bend of the Yaneze(sp) river, this is the start of the river which is so important to them. Then on to Tiger Leaping Gorge. We walked 5K to the rapids, they had to blast out the mountain to make walkways. Have I told you how many people stop us and want to have their picture made with us. We are like rock stars. They love Melissa our youngest member. She has curly hair and big cheeks and they love her. Also, all women carry umbrella's young to old. They work so hard to keep their skin light and we pay to tan, How crazy is that. Ok, I'm just now starting to get a handle on all these ethic groups. 56 in the country. The main one is Han. We were with the Naxi in Liliang and we moved through another group today and on to the Tibetian group. Each group has their own language. The main language of China in Mandrian. More on all this after I get home. Our guide now is Tibetian. Their are 6 million in China. They changed the town name to Shangri la in 2007 from Zhangdian. So after all these villiages we were expecting to arrive in a hut to stay in, but we have a great hotel. We quickly moved in and met for dinner, and then on to a show. We had Tibeitan food. Yak cheese and sugar to dip it in, raw barley grains, soybeans, barley wine, yak butter tea. Then our guide took barley flour and mixed it with his hand with yak butter tea. WE then took a scoop and rolled it into a ball and rolled in sugar. He says they eat it everyday here. Then they put on a Las Vegas Show. The costumes were great. In the end so young Tibetian guys sang Tibet pop. We loved it. They guys are good looking. Last year in russia we didn't see 10 good looking guys in a month. Asian men are very nice looking. By the end of the show we felt like we were in Branson. Oh yea they brought out cooked pig and we pulled off pork and dipped it in some spice. China has got the tourism thing under control. We are going to a national park tomorrow. Oh yea its really cold here, I'm using one of the scarves I bought. This was an indesribable day. I loved it.