Are part of what I had for dinner this evening. That's right, I ate grasshoppers. They were pretty tasty too, you just need to add some salt and pepper to it and it brings all of the flavor out of it. I also got to eat roses, which were really good. Picture a rose petal, completely surrounded by fried funnel cake batter and filled with a sweet bean curd sauce. And you dipped it in icing!! Yumm! But today was an interesting day all around It started with a 2 hour car ride to a Buddhist temple in Ling Shan, and it was HUGE!!! But on the way there, I saw a familiar sight from home if you live near Delaware. I saw a Dupont warehouse. For those of you who don't live in Delaware or Maryland, Dupont owns almost everything there, and that's not a huge exaggeration either. So then we were at the temple complex, which was at the base and on a mountain. And on this mountain there is a giant Buddha. I mean absolutely humongous! I can't even describe how big it is! But before you get there, there's a bit of walking to do; thank goodness there are so many distractions along the way. The coolest thing was this giant flower fountain, which was really a water show. It shot water, cool. But then the flower opens up and a baby Buddha rises out and is sprayed by nine dragon statues. He spins around slowly a few times, gets sprayed again, and then hides back in the flower. It was soooooo cool. So then we climb the mountain and we actually go right under the Buddha and see this giant museum. The Buddha was just as cool as the water show. It's the biggest free standing copper Buddha ever made! If you donate 1,000,000 RMB (Chinese Dollars= $152,000) You can have your name forever placed upon one of the copper leaves he stands on. So after we saw the Buddha, we went to Yi Xing to another temple,, which was smaller but a lot more fun. So first you have to go through this under ground tunnel which was made by an underground river, which is still there. I may have almost lost my head once or twice because the rocks were so low, but thankfully I didn't hit any of them. So then we take a cable car to the top of the mountain to see the temple, but guess what it's closed. But this is the cool part, there are two ways to get up the mountain, but three ways to get back down. you can walk, take the cable car, or you can take the slide. The slide was soooo awesome, I could have gone down that all day! After that the whole place was pretty much closed so we went home. When we did get home, we went across the street for dinner where we had some beef, some pork, some rice, some grasshoppers, and some rose petals. Great way to start the week! Hopefully it will get even better!
