Holiday's over

Well, I have had a very relaxing week. Sometimes you need an enforced holiday. Sometimes you don't realise you need one. I realised that it's been a very long time since I've just had time out. I think I had a week last year in June where I did virtually nothing, but since then, even when I've been doing fun things it's been hectic. I've spent most of the last week chatting around a fire with a German woman who was staying here. That was very nice. She left for Lijiang this morning, so I think that's my signal to get back to work.

When did I last post? I can't remember. Well, two days ago the snow had pretty much melted, except in the mountains so we went for a walk to a nearby village and a family invited us in for a snack of tiny crispy fish and fried potatoes. (At Y10 a head). Then we got a rowboat back to Lige. Soon after they served us a substantial evening meal of rice and lots of different dishes. Then at 10 pm someone walked in with a roast pig on a spit, which they had ordered earlier in the day! It was already roasted, so we took photos and then they chopped it up and put all the bits in a bowl above the fireplace. We sat around in a circle, ate pork, drank beer and played rock, paper, scissors: The rules were that if you lost you had to sing a song or skull a beer. Chinese people really like singing so they didn't exercise the second option. I chose the beer several times and then had newfound confidence to sing. I sang some Dutch children songs, and then tried to think of the shortest Australian song I knew, and gave a beautiful rendition of "Give me a home among the gum trees" followed by the first verse of "Waltzing Mathilda".

The next time I lost I explained that since my beer glass was empty I would sing about beer. I started singing "One hundred bottles of beer on the wall". For anyone not familiar, the beer bottles keep falling off the wall so you count down through "99 bottles of beer on the wall, 99 bottles of beer on the wall, if one of those bottles should happen to fall there'd be 98 bottles of beer on the wall. 98 bottles of beer on the wall... etc." Everyone liked it and clapped, but eventually stopped me at 90 bottles. It was quite a funny night.

Yesterday was another lazy day. My sole activity being a short climb up the hill on Lige Isle where we sat and looked at the view. In the evening, we went to the guesthouse next door where a lot of the locals were having a party. Managed to exchanged my glass of "Bai jiu" (Spirits) for a glass of beer fairly quickly. A lot of people were singing Mosuo songs, the German girl sang a German song. We ate lamb and rice. Yum- but we'd already had dinner. Walked back to our guesthouse around 12 or 1.

This morning the roads were pronounced clear and all the guests left. Quite a few had been waiting for the snow to subside properly. All except me. Oh well.