Days 1 and 2: The Adventure Begins

Friday was a day of craziness. I got up early to clean and pack more of my things. I brought my big suitcase and my airplane carry on over to Cindy’s parents house where I will be staying after a few days before I leave for Portland. It took a bit of effort lugging my stuff up five flights of stairs!

Then, I raced back to my apartment and brought over a last set of household things for the new teacher at EF. At that point, I was starting to get a little sad. It was my last walk between my apartment and EF. I also was giving away a lot of stuff in the last few days.

I had about an hour to madly clean before my nice landlady came by. She was even surprised that I had cleaned. She told me that most people in China just expect that the renter move all of their stuff out. I was given back my deposit, which was a wonderful surprise.

I had one last look around my apartment and left with my landlord. I was sad to leave my little studio, but luckily I had to hurry back over to Cindy’s to meet up with her and Joyce.

We took a crazy cab ride over to the train station. The station was just pure madness. We were walking over people as we moved in line to get to the train. If you ever want to feel the scope of China’s population, get yourself to a train station!
We ended up in a sleeper car. We were going to have to share it with a grandfather, but luckily a woman offered to switch with the grandfather because it would be inappropriate for three young women to sleep in the same space as a grandfather.

We passed the evening playing cards with the woman and her husband. I learned how to play Chinese poker, which is way easier than the poker I have been taught to play. There isn’t any gambling involved, but a lot of smack talk!

It was mostly pretty fun to sleep on the train. I would wake up every time we got to a stop to let people off. I also had a weird dream where our train went all the way from Beijing to Chicago where we were invited to go on the now extinct “Oprah” show.

We arrived in Joyce’s hometown Xiang Fan around noon on Saturday. We were met by Joyce’s dad who drove us over to meet Joyce’s mom in a beautiful restaurant. Joyce has not been home for over a year, so it was a pretty big welcoming day! Her parents are truly lovely and have been spoiling me the whole time. In the afternoon, we went over to an ancient area to do some shopping and sight seeing. In the evening, we went out to KTV that night with Joyce’s oldest friend, Summer.