I had plans to tell a few stories about my time in Xiahe this past weekend.  (The pics told their own stories, but I had a few more that required words.)  That was the plan…and then we took another trip to a Muslim village a few hours south of Xining.  Now I don’t know what to talk about.  It’s all a blur.

This time the whole family went on the outing. With our Norwegian neighbors and another  friend from our team we rented a van and driver for the day and went over a mountain pass to the village of Hua Long.  I call it a village, but in China that means it’s a city of 500,000 people or so.

It was an interesting place…much different from Xiahe on every level.  We drew a lot of attention as we walked around the city with our five little piao liang (beautiful) western kids in tow.

After visiting the mosque in Hua Long and feasting on some good Muslim cuisine (noodles, mutton, etc.) we drove through a scenic gorge so that we could see a huge dam that was constructed in a city nearby.  After a day of visiting sites and riding in the van we were all pretty wiped out.

And now…we’re heading to Thailand in four days!  And I’ll turn 32…

So who knows when you’ll get the stories?  But at least here are some pictures to ponder…

(I apologize for the time it will take for these pictures to load.  I had to expand my post count in order to keep the old ones visible.)