The 25th international ice and snow festival in Harbin, China (in one of its most northern provinces) takes place every January. One of the largest ice festivals in the world,  sculptures and castles are made up of huge ice blocks encasing a myriad of colored lights.  This particular night  the temperature dipped down to -25ºF. Walking around on frozen feet, the face mask I was wearing literally froze to my face. It ended up ripping a bunch of skin off my cheeks and nose and stained my face blue.  I looked pretty stupid for a while.  The whole scale of the the thing was simply amazing though.  I don’t know if it was my new found love for ice sculptures or the hypothermia clouding my brain but im pretty sure I was smiling the whole time.

And I am super excited to never go back.