Mt. Emei

After our mostly sleepless night. We needed to get up early to see the sunrise so at 4 A.M. We went outside to meet our new Chinese friend who helped us get the hotel room. They wanted to help us find our way since they knew more or less where they where going and we had not clue. Just a little note to everyone I love Chinese people they are mostly very kind to foreigners especially ones who are interested in there culture. Anyway so there we where at 4 A.M. climbing a holy buddhist mountain in picth dark using our cell phones and cameras as the only light we had. I like to stop at these moments to put things in perspective. One of the girls I was traveling with began to have some trouble and we could not keep up with the first group of Chinese guys so we fell behind and quickly joined another group of Chinese students who where going our speed and helped us the rest of the way. It was really cool because they where trying to talk to us in English and we were trying to talk to the in Chinese very fun. So we finally made it to the top and it is still dark and we are just walkig climbing some stairs and then we see out of the mist a giant statue that is gold plated with four giant elephants facing in four different directions with a giant buddha on it INCREDIBLE. Since it was not sunrise yet we ended up eating a monks breakfast in one of the monastaries. We where the only foreigners or lao wai in chinese we took several pictures with our new friends. Then we went to go see the sunrise but it was too cloudy but I can see I was there at sunrise and made the effort. By the time we were done not seeing the sunrsie the Giant gold buddha and temple at the top of the mountain where open. It could have been because it was so hard to get to the top or something else but it was the most amazing temple I have seen in China or which I have seen over 10. It was similar in one way to the other ones and that is because there where people outside and in lighting candles and incense and praying. This is the time when you truly do feel like foreigner like you should not be there at all. You are a voyeur watching these people pray at this site on one hand you feel honored for them letting you be there but on the other you feel bad because I know that I do not know what it means to them. A very eary experience but one I am glad to have. I am sorry if these last couple of post where a little long winded and broken up but i wanted to say so much because it was a really special experience and I hope you read this and get a feeling for what it was like for me. I still left a lot of stuff out and someday i hope I can talk to everyone and fill in the holes. Thanks for reading this rambling mess it was really good for me to write it out here and tell you all about it. thanks.