Guilin is a little too large for my tastes. We only stayed one night and left the next day for Yangshuo, a smaller town not too far away. The highway between the two is small and has a lot of bicycle traffic between various villages along the way so I saw students riding home from school in their uniforms and a half dozen plump, live brown chickens tied upside down to the back of a scooter. After we arrived in Yangshuo, a man speaking English convinced us to come see his hostel and kept dropping his price until we agreed to stay, 70 RMB per night for both of us. He had said it was an international youth hostel but we realized later that there are a dozen hotels who have named themselves international youth hostels in Yangshuo, we should've kept looking and we might've found the real one. The town is small enough that we are walking between these sharp limestone hills which are more technically described as karst hills. It's quite touristy but I feel like I can get away from the tourism easily so I don't mind.

It's been tiring sometimes trying to communicate in Chinese. I haven't been in Chinese class for 9 months and I haven't been in a Chinese-speaking environment since I studied in Taiwan in the summer of '06. I can make do but my ears are rusty and I am forgetting simple stuff. But slowly, it's coming back to me. I am stressed sometimes because Zaq is relying on me to pass on my faulty understanding of whatever situation we may be in and to order a decent array of dishes at each meal. I'm sure he would prefer to fend for himself. Menu recognition is my top priority.

I am happy to see cats in China, they were rare in India and Nepal. Here, they lounge on sacks of grain in shops and mew for attention or food.