Celebrating Sean's Birthday!

For Sean's birthday we invited some friends to our house to celebrate!! We decided to make Mexican food and hang out for the evening. We had a few of the kiddos over early to help us cook and have a little fun!

The food!

Our friends that came over

Big Momma brought us gifts! She gave each of us a new shirt!

Sean's new shirt!

Rach and the little kiddos

Jeremy and I

The whole group in our living room

The cake they brought for Sean

Haha....

The results!

Hanging out with friends!

Just good times hanging out with friends

Going out to lunch!

Some friends took me to a pet shop where we played for a few hours

Trying to decide whether they should get baby turtles

Then us playing with snakes

Climbing Hua Shan

I packed by bookbag with some warm clothes, water, snacks and headed to the train station. There we grabbed a bowl of awesome ni rou la mein (noodles) and then boarded the bus.

We decided to go and climb Hua Shan - a mountain about 2 hours by bus outside of my city. Hua Shan has 5 peaks and the tallest is 2160 meters high. Most of our friends told us they make this climb starting at night... then arrive at the top just in time for the sunrise. We wanted our first time climbing it to be during the day time... so we knew what we were getting ourselves into...

We climbed 6 hours up the first day.... then the next morning another 4 hours hiking around to the peaks

On the way up... Sean doing a adveristment for Snickers

Couples hike to the top where they buy a lock and have their names engraved on it. Tradition is to lock the lock at the top and throw the key over the mountain... so their love will last forever

The four of us taking a little break

It was really hot during the day... and this little kid was wearing a few layers... and obviously was very upset

The view!

We hiked to the top of this cliff

The sun going down.... the mountains just went for miles.... it was so beautiful
This is where I started to get cold... snow at the top!

We reached the East Peak as the sun was going down and found a little place to stay the night and get a good bowl of noodles. There was no running water and the bathroom was a little outhouse which was on the side of the cliff.... which went right down the mountain. It was definitely a cold night for me... but so much fun getting to stay at the top of the peak.

We woke up at 5am and climbed to the rocks to watch the sunrise

All of us around 6:30am

Rach and Bob on the plank...!

Coming down one of the peaks

Climbing to another peak

Definitly enjoyed my time climbing Hua Shan! For more pictures CLICK HERE