Sichuan Province: Chengdu, Ya'an, Mianyang

This past week's travels took me to several parts of China that I had not seen before. The first destination was Sichuan Province. I flew into Chengdu and Aroma was there to greet me. The next day we traveled to Ya'an, a small city that is up in the mountains. It was so cold there!! For one of our outings we went even further up into the mountains to see panda bears. Aroma's student's father was driving us up and eventually he had to stop because the snow was too slick on the roads. He said that we would have to walk the rest of the way to see the pandas. After about 20 minutes Aroma said to me, "Oh, by the way, it's a 2 hour walk up there." What?!?! I guess that's the first time I've hiked for 2 hours up a mountain in the snow to see panda bears...and maybe the last! :) Apparently during the summer the panda cubs are free to roam the park and visitors are able to feed and even hug them. I didn't get to do this because there were no cubs at that time which was fine by me - hugging bears is not up there on my list of life goals!


Hiking the mountain...
Sichuan Province is known for its spicy food so I had my share of spicy food while I was there. Aroma was good to me and just ordered foods that were mildly spicy but even after that my stomach was shouting its displeasure so I soon switched over to filling up on noodles!

A small village outside of Ya'an
While in Mianyang we went to visit Aroma's school. It is a boarding school so the students live there. Many of these 12-14 year olds only go home once or twice a year and while they are at school they are studying like crazy. They have classes from 7:40 a.m. until 9:10 p.m. everyday except for Sunday. Their meals are scheduled, their study time is scheduled, they are even required to take a nap at a certain time. Can you imagine? Think back to your middle school days...do you even remember having homework to do at night?? There is also a primary and high school attached and Aroma showed me where the primary school students live - she said the youngest kids that they have are 4 years-old! 4 years-old and living at a school - yikes! It sounds outlandish but it is considered a very good school even though it is rigorous - it has to be because of the high competition in China.

I will post again soon with pictures and stories from the second half of my trip - Kunming!