over the chinese national day holiday, 6 of us went to huangshan in anhui province about 5 hours from shanghai. ani stayed in shanghai with our friends, the crandall's. we started out on tuesday night around 6 pm and expected to get in around 11 or 12 at the latest. well do to our driver's ideas about which way was faster we pulled in around 3 am! the dirt road passes really tested my nerves for the last leg of the drive. but, god is good and we arrived safe and alive. the hotel was very nice and we were able to get enough sleep to face the mountain on wednesday. we started up the mountain around 10 am with a ride by taxi to the base of the cable car rides. while standing in line to buy tickets a huge bee came along and stung tyler in the back of his neck. we waited about 30 minutes before getting our tickets and riding up the cable car in case tyler had a reaction to the bee. again god covered us and tyler was left with quite a red mark, but no alergic reaction. once at the top of the cable car ride we explored the walk ways. cement sidewalk literally hanging on the side of the cliffs. it sounds scary and i thought i would be extremely concerned about the kids especially, but it proved to be safe and very enjoyable. we ended our day with a dinner at a local restaurant and headed to bed early. tyler and i snuck out for tyler's first foot massage because we had had a nap in the afternoon and weren't ready for bed yet. the next morning we woke up in time for breakfast at the hotel and started making our way towards anji where the bamboo forest was. our complete trip home was about 10 hours after our stop at the bamboo forest. our stop at the forest was fairly quick. i think we were all anxious to get back at that point. it was worth the stop though. we hiked up one of the mountain sides and rode a roller coaster down. i rode with greta and we got hit by tyler behind us who thought is was bumper cars. then walking back to the car greta had to go to the bathroom and on our walk there two dogs came rushing out of nowhere baking at us. i just yelled, "NO!" and with the help of their owners they backed down. whew! it was a time of good heart pumping for me! we made it back to shanghai safely around 8pm to pick up ani. thank god for his protection!
