Today we again woke up bright and early at 5:50am to catch the tour bus around 7:00am. We spent our day visiting the Three Gorges Dam, a hydroelectric dam spanning the Yangtze River. It is the world's largest power station in terms of installed capacity, and it generates about 90 TWh per year. I had seen pictures of the dam online before, but the photos did not do it justice. Up close you could see just how massive the dam was; it was no wonder it took nearly twenty years to completely finish the dam project. After we had lunch, we returned to the river for a three hour boat ride. During the boat ride a few kids had noticed us, and they eventually came to our table to talk to us. They knew a bit of English, and they began to ask us questions about where we were from. We quickly became friends and we invited them to join us for a game of Uno. We had a lot of fun and ended up exchanging WeChat information with a few of them. Towards the end of the boat ride, we got a chance to pass through the famous ship lift, a machine for transporting boats between two different water levels. Everyone gathered around outside on the upper deck to watch the ship lift transport our boat along with about five other boats down to the lower water level. It was pretty amazing, and it lowered the ship fairly rapidly. After the boat ride, we returned back to the bus to make our long trip back to the university.

Our long awaited trip to Three Gorges Dam has finally arrived. We woke up super early and got together at 4:50am to take a taxi to the high speed train station. We arrived at the train station a bit early, so we had breakfast at a nearby McDonalds and waited until 7:00am to take the high speed train. About three hours later we arrived, and we hopped onto a tour bus to begin our journey. We would not be visiting Three Gorges Dam until tomorrow, so we spent Saturday exploring the mountain areas in the city. We first stopped to visit the Golden Lion Cave which is a limestone cave situated at Xiling Gorge. The cave consisted of a labyrinth of tunnels, and it contained many artworks of limestone. The deeper and deeper we travelled through the labyrinth, the cooler and cooler the temperature became which was a nice escape from the heat outside. Next, we visited another cave called Lover’s Spring named so for the spring hidden deep within the cave. Lastly, we ended our day visiting the Three Gorges Waterfall. Three Gorges Waterfall occupies a large area within the mountains famous for its natural waterfall. In order to reach the waterfall, we had to first trek up alongside a river surrounded by a small jungle. It required us to walk across the river by stepping on stones and crossing a few rope bridges. At the top of the path was the beautiful waterfall splashing down creating a rainbow in the mist of water. We purchased a few rain ponchos and crossed underneath the waterfall. Though the panchos did little to keep us dry, we enjoyed the being underneath the waterfall watching the water crash below. After taking a few hundred pictures, we returned back down to the bus and later arrived at our hotel. We had dinner at a nearby mall and went to bed early to rest for tomorrow's trip.

After lunch we met up with Dian and Jiao at our favorite tea shop which has become our unofficial hangout place. After playing a few games of Uno, we decided to check out the gym to play some table tennis. Rather than walk over as we normally would, Dian and Jiao rented us a few bicycles to ride over. HUST has a bicycle renting program that allows students to check out bicycles and ride them anywhere on campus. We managed to find a bike for everyone and made our way over to the gym. Once we arrived, we learned that the gym was undergoing renovation and would not be open for the next few days. We decided instead to spend the day riding our bikes all around the campus. We seemed almost like a biking gang as we all rode along in our matching yellow bicycles. Dian and Jiao took us over to the east side of campus which we had not seen before. Even by bike it took about twenty-five minutes to reach the other side of campus! After we had looped back to our start, we rode our bikes to the campus border to head over to the mall for dinner.

This afternoon Dian and Jiao invited us to hike up a trail behind campus. Guthrie had been feeling ill the last few days, so he decided to stay home and rest for the day. The rest of us stocked up on water and met with Dian and Jiao outside our apartments. As we were approaching the hiking trail, we noticed that the start of the trail was a long stair climb going all the way up the hill. With Rocky music in our heads we pushed forward all the way to the top of the hill. At the top there was a lookout point overlooking the entire campus. Dian pointed out where the campus border was and we realized just how large the campus was. There were two paths that lead back down the hill, and Dian took us along a the longer, more scenic route to the bottom. We took the road less traveled, and it made all the difference. The hill is covered in trees, shrubs, and grass; it felt as though we were lost in a grand forest. Along the way we stumbled upon a small group of houses, and it seemed almost like a lost village hidden among the trees. We eventually made it all the way back down sweaty and tired, and later returned to our apartments to rest.

Today we had a free day, so most of us slept in this morning. We all did our own thing for breakfast and lunch, then met up at the tea house in the afternoon with Dian and Jiao to play some card games. Since we were playing with multiple people, the game lasted a little over an hour to finish. Afterwards Dian pulled out a deck of poker cards he had brought with him, and we all agreed to play a game of Texas Hold'em. Dian and Jiao had never played poker before, so we first played a few warm up games until they got the hang of it. We had all been accumulating lots of coins over our stay in China, and we ended up using them as poker chips to play. By this time Dian's friend had come to the tea shop to join us, and so it became a eight-way match of Texas Hold'em. After an intense three hour game, Dian's friend came out on top and cleaned us all out. Beginner's luck. Though it was the first time Jiao, Dian, and his friend had played poker, they all enjoyed the game and were quite good at it. Later we walked to our favorite cafeteria for dinner and returned back to our apartments.