Day Twenty-Seven

It has been quite a long day! After my blog entry yesterday I ended up walking around the hotel and down to the beach. When I got to the beach I relaxed for a little bit then came back up to jump in the pool. Before getting dinner I made a quick run to the hotel gym. After dinner my friend Fiona came and visited me. Once she left I read my new book Wild Swans, which I just found out is prohibited from publication in China because of its "anti-Maoism / anti-communist" sentiment.

This morning I got up around eight thirty and came down to the hotel lobby to get breakfast. After breakfast Fiona and her mom met me and we took a taxi bus to go pick up my professor and her assistant, ( who I didn't expect to see again on this trip). Once we picked them up we went to the Nanshan Temple which is basically like a religious Disneyland. We visited a handful of temples and took pictures of beautiful statues. We stuck around the Buddhist theme park for about three hours and grabbed lunch on our way back.

For the first time in my life I actually watched as my meal was slaughtered! For lunch Fiona and I went to the fish tanks, chose the victim we'd be eating for lunch and witnessed as the "chef" clubbed it to death. Aside from a fried fillet dish the fish was also used to make a delicious tofu soup.

After lunch we went to a beach to go see the "End of the Earth," a rock with a large red inscription on it symbolizing the world's edge. The early inhabitants of the island truly believed it was the last piece of land before the vast ocean and then nothingness. Unfortunately, or maybe I should say fortunately, no one really had the energy for a rocky boat ride with no shade, ( I ended up getting a little sunburned anyway).

Before coming back to our hotel we stopped in the city so that the girls could do a little shopping. We ate dinner when we got to our instructor's hotel and then our driver brought us back to our hotel.

On the way back to our hotel my friend Fiona asked if I would be like to come with her and her mom to visit her father's business. Her father, along with three other partners, has been very successful in starting a new company. The company makes parts for air conditioning thermostats and is located in Guangzhou, (I'll check the spelling on that later). There are about 2,000 migrant workers employed. Anyways, they have graciously invited me to come visit Guangzhou from the 26th to the 29th and to possibly come to Macau until I need to go up to Shanghai on the 3rd. Anyways, I'm going to see what I can do with my current ticket from Haikou to Shanghai because if I go to Guangzhou I may not come back to Hainan.

Besides my new itinerary turmoil nothing else really happened tonight. Tomorrow we're going to leave the hotel early to go visit a small island off the coast of Sanya. Night guys!