Well the giant Buddha really must be watching over me because once again I had great weather today. Even the people at the hostel were saying it's unheard of to get three picture perfect days here without rain (or snow!). They had 12 inches of snow before I got here and tomorrow when I leave they're supposed to get 6 more so I got lucky with the 3 days I was here. But it would have been cool to see a Chinese snow storm! Ummm... OK, I'm thinking that might have been inappropriate! 🙂 By the way, several of you have asked me why I'm going to all these Buddhist temples and whether I'm exploring Buddhism or thinking of converting. Well two things... one is that they end up being the coolest cultural things in some of these cities and so different than anything you see in the states as well as they have these really cool gardens and grounds that are just very peaceful when you're in these noisy big cities. But secondly, and probably most important is that I was raised Catholic and am carrying around enough guilt with one religion, I ain't about to take on another one!! The park today was just gorgeous and as always the pcitures can't do it justice. I was able to get back to some of the coolest sites that I saw yesterday (camera-less!) as well as explore new parts of the park today. I am sooo tired! I'm looking forward to my travel day tomorrow. The flight back to Chengdu was way too expensive for some reason and there's no trains from here to there (this place is really in the boonies) so I'm trying out the Chinese bus service for the first time (think slow boat to China!). I forget what the mielage is but the plane flight here was only about 30 minutes but it's going to take 10 hours via bus!! I'll definitley catch up on my sleep and have downloaded a bunch of content to my tablet so I should be good. I just hope they don't seat me next to a very large Tibetan woman since I hear one of their main staples are onions! I did want to give a shout out to my various sports fans. For all my fellow Steelers fans I'm so happy Ben and the boys beat up on the mamby pamby Tom Brady and the Patriots! Condolences to my Panthers fans who lost another close one. Once this team learns to win they'll be a force to reckon with. And a big congrats to my St Louis contingent on the Cardinals big World Series victory!! That is awesome! I really miss watching the NFL games. What's with a country that has no ESPN??? LOL. Well I hope all of you really do have a Happy Halloween (I was a day early yesterday with my greetings). By the way, this is exactly the half way point of my trip. I've been here two weeks and have two more weeks to go. OK, OK, for those counting, yes, that's only 14 more emails you have to read. Geez! LOL. Happy Monday!! Jeff
The Wandering Italian 