With nothing left to do we jumped in the taxi and headed towards Shengda - the college where David and Gael teach English. After arriving much later than anticipated we were met by Gael and a couple of other teachers who had been waiting to meet us and take us out to a local restaurant for dinner. Before heading out into the night again, we added a few more layers as Zhengzhou is friggin' freezing! Over dinner we swapped China travel and teaching stories, and Adam got to enjoy a new variety of beer (Aoke). We are so grateful and stoked that Gael and David arranged a studio apartment at their beautiful college for us - it fitted in perfectly with our budget very well (considering it was free!). It was interesting seeing how other teachers live in comparison to us. On the whole there are pros and cons to each of our teaching gigs.
On Sunday morning we woke super early to visit the Shaolin Temple, which is one of Henan's major draw cards. This required over an hour to get to the bus station from where we could catch a bus to Dengfeng. First we attempted to change our train tickets, but hit resistance and were told once again to return tomorrow - after almost 7 months in China some of their systems still fail to make any sense to us. After another 2 hours on the bus we arrived in Dengfeng from where we tried to follow the Lonely Planet's directions for public buses to the temple, which turned out to be utterly wrong, in the end (after battling with the public buses for over an hour) time frames required us to succumb to the anti-adlibbing step of taking a taxi!
All the hassle to get there was worth it as the temple, though predominantly renovated after surviving through several wars and the cultural revolution, was beautiful. 
We spent several hours wandering the grounds where we encountered a few halls with stunning old frescoes - one of which housed the shadow stone of Bodhidharma - a monk who was rejected from the temple and spent 9 years sitting upright and praying to the stone wall in order to rest his brain - the result is that his shadow is left on the stone.Another highlight was the pagoda forest full of (surprisingly) hundreds of old pagodas, some showing their age and crumbling to pieces.
The day ended with a demonstration of Shaolin gongfu by present-day monks, where they showed off their amazing and almost inhuman talents of fighting styles based on animals' movements such as snakes and tigers. 
They also showed their weapon skills with very unique weapons that would be scary enough without a fighting monk-machine on the other end! After the show Adam got to play around with some of the training equipment outside, along with the hundreds of others who flocked to view this world renowned temple. 
After a number of hours on the bus we eventually made it back to Zhengzhou. Following our friends' strict instructions we hopped on the bus to take us straight back to the college. We hit a hitch however when after an hour on the bus a friendly student sitting next to Liv informed us that this bus was going to a completely different university! We jumped off with her and soon she had us piled into a tuk-tuk and accompanied us on the short journey back to our campus - just another demonstration of the incredible hospitality that Chinese people constantly provide. 
She even paid for the trip and wouldn't take any money back from us - claiming it was her 'honour and pleasure' to do so!Back at the college we had a new group of teachers ready to take us out to another local restaurant, where Adam got introduced to a meal we are yet to encounter in Jinan. The meal was basically a big baking train filled with a chicken, potato, and chilli stew - the catch was the whole chicken was just chopped up in big chunks, with feet sticking out and eyes staring you in the face. The custom was for the guest to receive the chicken head - Adam was the first of many guests to actually accept the challenge and soon feasting on gooey chicken brains!
Liv was more civilized and dined on usual yummy Chinese veges. At the end the dish is filled with an endless supply of hot noodles to fill you up, though everyone was already pretty full after enjoying another lot of beer that Adam can add to his list.Both evenings when we were taken out for dinner, we were asked by our hosts whether or not the places we were going to were up to our standards!!! If only they knew the places we dined at back home in Jinan ...
Waking even earlier on Monday we again ventured to the train station and this time were successful in getting sleeper tickets home for the next night! Thank goodness for that! By 8.30am were on a bus headed to Luoyang, which happens to be the original starting point of the silk road and home to the Longmen Grottoes - our destination for the day.
These caves were begun in AD494 and were completed over the next 200 years - and were phenomenal to say the least. There are more than 100,000 images of Buddha and his disciples carved into the rock, 2,800 inscriptions and 2,345 caves stretching more than a kilometre along the Yi He (Yi River). It was sad to see so many with heads missing or having been totally destroyed during the cultural revolution or removed by collectors over the years - the positive of this though is that the government is now undertaking restoration work and making protection the main priority. 
The sheer size of some of the carvings blew our minds away, and even though we had planned to spend a short period of time here so we could make it back for new year's eve dinner celebrations, we inadvertently lingered around, being awestruck by the complexity of these carvings created by chisels and a lot of devotion.Unfortunately we didn't come close to making it back to Zhengzhou in time for dinner with David and Gael and friends, instead we had to dine on a very average Chinese fast-food meal. We managed to check in to the wonderful hotel (the Starlight Holiday Hotel) that they had booked for us and left a note at reception to grab us when they arrived and give us our bag they were bringing in for us, with slightly more respectable attire. We were oblivious to the fact that David had already made a visit to the hotel during the day after being unable to find the number to call and book a room for us as they had given us the only hotel card they had with the number on it! After waiting around the hotel, we got a phone call from one of their friends with details of the bar they were celebrating at, and soon Liv was utilising her Chinese skills in convincing the hotel reception staff to let us into David and Gael's room to fetch our bag! Soon, we were on our way to join the party!
When we arrived at the 'bar' we were a little taken aback, as the bar was in the most luxurious hotel we have ever seen!!! We were told to make our way to "Scott's Bar" and were not expecting the 5-star hotel bar that we ended up in.
Here we spent the next few hours knocking back tequila shots and sipping Champagne with a good crowd from David and Gael's school. For some reason at 11.45pm the group decided to head to a more hip nightclub (Enjoy Disco Club) for the countdown and we were literally walking in the door when the new year's countdown began, in Chinese of course - which was more difficult to join in with than one might think!
Before long we were invited to join a Chinese group at their table where we were shared a few free beers and spirits with them! The men were constantly pouring class after class of cognac for us - in true Chinese style! Eventually the last few days of early mornings caught up with us and we returned to the hotel with David and a very tired Gael - who had very impressively run a half marathon on the treadmill earlier on in the day. Back at the hotel we literally fell into bed!We spent the first day of 2008 being shown around Zhengzhou city - we visited their huge supermakets, shopped in the local street markets and indulged in some of Zhengzhou's finest street food. We eventually had to farewell David and Gael as they headed back to their college for their last week of teaching before going back to New Zealand - very jealous (in some ways)!
We found ourselves with 5 hours of free-time before our train and decided to spend some time in the internet cafe before heading out to dinner and boarding our sleep train home!
We were woken up by a tap on the feet by the train conductor alerting us to the fact that we were half an hour off Jinan. Back in familiar territory it was a quick and painless process to catch the buses back to our apartment. Today we are spending the day preparing and packing for our 7 week holiday. First stop: Beijing.
Adlibing it into 2008.
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