Happy Birthday Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen from the Chinese Colonial Williamsburg

The guys on the trip agree that today might have been the best day of the journey thus far (it's only rival being the day we saw the Great Wall). Katie stayed back for a relaxing day around the city while the guys rented bikes and headed out past the city. Once we got out into the country the landscape was beautiful. Fields in every direction, set against the backdrop of a mountain that would tower anything we have in the Appalachians (called Windy Mountain, we do believe). I write this blog now because the day was so exhausting that we don't have the energy for much else. While we were biking (possibly a little under an hour into our bike) we ran into a Chinese couple. The proceeded to show us to Windy Mountain Lake. The water was extremely tranquil. We separated ways with our friends and kept biking. We found our way to a village. At first we just stopped for a bit of water. To our right was a full basketball court and the guy at the store threw us a basketball. We were shooting around when people started walking up. We started out playing 3 on 3 with a gentleman (perhaps in his 40's or 50's). Quickly word spread in the village of the westerners who were there playing basketball. People started to show up (probably 25- 30 in all). A bunch of men in the village came out wearing matching jerseys (the man we were playing with would eventually go back to get his). Before we knew it we were playing a 5 on 5 full court game against the village team. We were kinda just playing around but one of the guys went and got a whistle and started reffing. We ended up playing something like 4 20-30 minute quarters and played for something like 2-3 hrs in total. It was absolutely amazing. We loved that their team came out in uniform to play us. Sadly we didn't demolish them or even beat them. We left the village in the afternoon and began to make our way back Lijiang. We were worn out from the basketball and we struggled a good bit (cutting through open fields). When we were finally back in the city most of us were pretty dehydrated (most of us were dizzy with headaches). Nathan and I hadn't really eaten all day and it had been something like 8 hrs since the others had eaten. Nathan made his way back to the hostel to lay down while the rest of us grabbed some KFC. We all agreed that it's been a while since we were this tired and the trip to the gorge tomorrow will probably be moved back. Still, one of the best days here so far. We took pictures with the villagers and we're going to print off copies of them to take as gifts for their hospitality and friendliness.