On the bus there
We arrived around 12:30 p.m. and had lunch by the hotel in which we were staying. About 10 of us were cramped into a small and hot room. There was too much food, some of which was delicious and some which was a little odd, that we weren’t able to finish it all. After lunch, we checked into the hotel that Marissa and I were to share a room for the night.
The view from our room
The bathroom
The room and Marissa
Around 3 p.m., we went to visit the North Hill Grotto. Most of the students just went ahead on their own, but some of us stayed with Wentao and the tour guide who told us more about the cliff carvings.
By the entrance
The carvings!
This carving shows how someone gets to Heaven.
These types of holes were all over the place on the floor. Their purpose is to burn incense in front of the carvings and statues of gods. However, most of these are not allowed to be used in order to protect the carvings.
Supposedly, this was at one point a male god, but is now considered to be female. I'm not sure why this is.
The remains of a Buddhist monk are in this tomb, believe it or not!
The peacock king (and myself).
One of the thousands of tiny statues by the peacock king.
The god of birth or something like that. Women pray to her to help them get pregnant. The red box at the bottom has money in it that the visitors donate.
The reason the tombstone in the middle is black is because people have done so many rubbings over it.
A temple on the grounds of North Hill Grotto. In the other house behind this one was an altar as well as fortune tellers that you could pay to have them tell you about your future.
We tried to take a dirt path down to the bus, but found that a part of it was too steep. Apparently, two of my guy classmates had made it down, but a couple of us decided to turn back around and go back the same way we came.
We returned to the hotel around 5 p.m. and had about an hour of free time before dinner. So, Marissa, David and I walked around by the hotel for a little while. Marissa bought two turtles during that time because she wanted to have pets, since she can't have them at home in the U.S..
Dinner at the hotel.
After dinner, I returned to the hotel room and played with Marissa’s turtles for a little bit. I worked on my blog a little, and watched t.v.. Marissa came back with Will and their Chinese teacher (who joined us on our trip to Dazu Grotto) from walking around town again and we all hung out in our room watching t.v.. Will and their teacher then left to go play cards and Marissa and I stayed in and got ready for bed soon thereafter.
Playing with one of Marissa's turtles. I think this one is Pong. The other one's name is, of course, Ping.
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