When the Sister-In-Law Gets Old

Our last day in Yangshuo was Krystal's 18th birthday so we wanted to make sure it was a day she would never forget. Because seriously, how many people get to spend their 18th birthday in CHINA?

We started out the day with a fantastic breakfast, but Brigette and I snuck down to the restaurant early to prepare a little surprise for her...

The women at the restaurant were so excited and supportive of us celebrating her birthday, and they even offered to play the happy birthday song over the speakers when she came into the restaurant and let us use their lighter when ours didn't work. But Krystal was super excited to have and use a lighter. She never had before, silly child.

Then it was present time. I couldn't pick out of the following pictures, so enjoy the following sequence. There's never a dull moment with Krystal...

This says 18, in case you missed it.

BEST OREOS EVER.

Sniffing the breakfast...heavenly.

I'll give more details of the day in the following posts, but we made sure to fit in everything she wanted to do. We finished up the day with dinner of her choosing,

It took SIX tries to get this photo...

played some family around-the-world,

and then we headed back to the airport. She was sad to realize that she had to give up her beloved birthday lighter, so we made sure to document the moment.

And then we were off to Nanjing! But first, let's backtrack...

Shop Til You Drop

Something I have learned since marrying Spencer is that his family LOVES their souvenirs. Which makes sense, with all the traveling they do, that they are always in search of the coolest things they can find. So I shouldn't have been surprised when we spent the entire second half of our second day in Yangshuo shopping around West Street, which is the market area of the city.

All you need to know about our shopping excursion:
1) We tried new things.

Buying fruit

Trying passion fruit for the first time, yummy!

Dragon fruit

2) We had fun.

Bryonna jammin' with the locals.

3)  We bought A LOT.

This is Spencer and my small vase. This lady paints from
the inside! See video below.

That's right, I'm haggling in CHINESE.

And Krystal talked this shop owner into a discounted price on
a tablecloth and a cool bag...in CHINESE!

By the time we were done we were EXHAUSTED but happy with bags full of fun souvenirs. And then we waited around for 40 minutes for our taxi to show up. Sheesh.

We played this game a lot.

But it was a great day and we are still LOVING the cool souvenirs we bought. They are sitting on my mantle looking at me right now, in fact. Warm fuzzies.

Learning Something New

Day two in Yangshuo started out with another one of my favorite activities of the trip. I'm a big fan of learning something new when I travel, so when I heard about the Yangshuo Cooking School I knew I wanted to take a class while we were there.

First of all, they come pick you up, and they speak English. Awesome. Second, the school is nestled against the river and is surrounded by the beautiful karst mountains that are all over the area. Amazing. Third, the food is DELICIOUS and you make it yourself. So cool.

So first we met at the entrance to the city park and after introducing ourselves to our guides and our British classmates, they took us basically across the street to the market. It was really similar to the market that we went to every week in Nanjing for fruits and veggies, but it was bigger. AND they explained what everything was, so I finally knew what all the weird looking produce was called that I had always wondered about.

We then piled into vans and drove for a few minutes to the school.

The students

The view

The classroom

The station

And then we started cooking!

First course: egg-wrapped dumplings.

Yeah baby...

Note to others who might do this in the future. This is not some advanced, difficult class. The purpose is to teach simple, authentic recipes using standard Chinese methods like steaming and wok cooking. There is a lot of chopping and frying, but it was so fun and I loved actually learning a few real recipes that I could replicate at home.

The final meal.

Aren't they so cute?!

So much fun. If you're ever in Yangshuo, I highly recommend it. We loved the food and we loved doing it together!