Look Ma no hands!

After Yangshuo I went to Liuzhou to visit Fan's family and learn how to make some Chinese food. Fan had told them that I love to exercise and like to swim, so they got her uncle to take me swimming in the river that wraps around their city. I put on my slightly loose board shorts hoped they would stay on, shook hands with Uncle and jumped in the water. As we swam out across and up the river to a huge bridge I realized that I had never swam in a huge river with waves and boats before. As we swam up river small waves would crash over my head and sometimes into my stomach, not directly, through my mouth, making my wonder about what it would be like to have giardia on the 27 hour trip back to Nanjing the next day. I decided that it wouldn't be much fun but stopping swimming wasn't really an option. Stopping swimming means sinking and the river bank was a long way away, plus Chinese people keep telling me that I look like feier pusa, Phelps. Since I had an image to keep up I decided swam my heart out and had a wonderful time. Swimming in rivers is addicting and now every river time I see I wonder if I could swim across it.


On a side note I am home now and the train ride went smoothly. Apparently the river is clean or the Giardia is afraid of people that look like Feierpusa.

Truth be told I didn't think about Phelps until just now but I did think of all of the crazy waters mom swims across, and then just relaxed into the water.