Remembering February: starting to head back from Yangshuo

Leaving Yangshuo was a bit sad. Grey skies. And I knew I was leaving traveling for a while. So many people had been in and out of my life in the past couple days. Some I would never see again.
I would love to describe, to draw, to inscribe in stone each person I passed, but I could not replicate them. Like the way, waking up that morning and wondering if the young man in the bunk next to me from Australia (we saw from his suitcase tag) would resemble someone I knew, and when the slender figure woke, his narrow nose and face led me to think of a friend of mine who had died a year and a half ago. Like the cheerful, eager young man from Guandong who exchanged some reading lessons with me--we opened up the hostel's little book of notes from travelers, and I read Chinese to him, he the English to me, late into the night at the hostel. And his darker, deep-sweet-eyed, serious companion who he met as he met me--by chance of staying at the same hostel. And like the way the darker, older of the two seemed to speak excitedly and then sadly of his age, 28, and how he must enjoy this traveling while he is young, before he gets old and must think too much, must be overcome by thoughts. He told me he already cannot sleep without first drinking alcohol, because of his thoughts. Like a young man from Poland whose boyish face and mannerisms seemed familiar, and who, in the 20 minutes before had to go catch his train asked me what the Chinese think about their situation, because he cannot speak Chinese and he is awfully curious. And after 20 minutes of facinating conversation, he is gone to catch the train to Shanghai. And like Roary, the 6 foot tall, curly-red-haired, nice Irishman who I kept running into, on the tops of a mountain in a park, and then on the streets in Yangshuo with Beth. And the sweet couple from England and Wales traveling the world for a year who share with me a bit about their travels and made me late picking up Beth from the airport because I was so fascinated by them. Yes, most of the other travelers are young men or couples. I seemed to be one of the few single women traveling on my own. Even among the traveling community. But it didn't matter, people were kind to me, no body asked me why it was just me. Just too many faces going by...

And the countryside bike ride that morning that I left, amongst the strange green and rocky hills thrusting up from flat green and yellow farm fields with a clear river twisting downt he middle, was incredible. I can't even begin to do the place justice. It was too real and surreal to register how beautiful it really was. And while we were biking through majesty, we were also biking through poverty--isolated farming villages. But in such a beautiful place. Bikes pumping, skin hiving (for who knows what reason), toes numbing by the end--but lovely adventure, really interesting, beautiful place, fare enough away from people to feel it, with just enough to help find the way...
It was definitely sad to leave Yangshuo. And I wasn't at all ready or excited quite yet to get back to teaching.