Oct 6 2013: Homeward Bound

SUNDAY

All day on the train! Pretty boring over all. I was on the top bunk again, so I was rudely awoke at 6 am. I had taken two sleeping pills and yet it didn’t really work. Katie and I ate a little bit, talked for a bit, started reading, I dozed off. We ate when I woke up, I ended up dozing, avoided card games with the couple who was going through some issue I never understood, a LOT of dozing. Unfortunately all three of our phones were dead by then [we didn’t have service in either place so they died pretty fast].

Eventually I got up though, gathered my things and finally it was time to get off the train! Yay! It was good to really be on my feet again. Although it was WAY crowded out there, so ridiculous. This again caused more stress in trying to find a taxi. Part of the problem, once we did find one, they didn’t want to go all the way out because they probably wouldn’t get anything on the way back, you know? Not the best service.

Abby and Greg stopped inside a shop for the restrooms. This gave Katie and I time to watch part of some little show going out beneath a tent. There was a guy shouting in his microphone, trying to get everyone in and listening. And beside him, was a magician.

A magician who most likely works as a stripper at night!

You would have thought so, too, from the way he danced. Seriously. It was pretty awesome and hilarious. We enjoyed that for a bit before Abby and Greg returned. About then we decided to offer to pay more for a ride back home, so instead of about 30 RMB we’d pay about 50 to get back.

The next driver was willing, so we did just that. It took a while with construction slowing us down near the school [very annoying], but we eventually returned. We got off at the school and thanked the driver as we headed down the street. Abby and Greg brought us over to the little family restaurant [has a lucky cat on the counter you can see from the street], and ordered two platters of ‘fajitas’ with a bowl of rice. They couldn’t stop talking about them and we’d been getting hungry so we figured it would be okay. I would have preferred to go home to shower, of course, but they didn’t care too much.

Definitely didn’t taste like fajitas, but super delicious! Beef with onions and green peppers sautéed in something delicious. It was great! For the three plates together it was 84 RMB but they gave us back 4 to be sweet. They miss the old American teachers and love that Greg and Abby come often.

After eating, they took us to the cute convenience store that they love, just across the street. This has mostly just snacks and such that they enjoy. Katie and I ended up trying out a few, along with getting hot coffee-chocolate drinks for the night. By the time we were buying, Abby and Greg had wisely gone home.

We headed home with only about 10 RMB left in our pockets after the whole week. Together, we had almost 3k RMB. We could have definitely spent more if we’d wanted. Super crazy, right? We couldn’t believe how much we’d gone through in such a short amount of time. But the transportation and museums and such definitely cost a bit overall, and we calculated everything out so it definitely made sense.

Finally we were home! It felt so good, so refreshing to return to our apartment. It smelled funny, but it was clean [we cleaned just before we left], and we loved being here. I hurriedly got out of my filthy clothes and took my first proper shower of the week and came out to Katie working on some laundry and pulling out her purchases from my luggage.

We went through everything and put them away. By then we were pretty hungry, so we dived into some snacks, had our drinks, and watched a movie since we were still awake. And finally, we got to sleep in our soft-like comfy beds with a TON of space!


*Update on Oct 28 '13:
I'm currently going through my posts and fixing pieces about my attitude towards Abby and Greg. I often felt like crap which made me frustrated with myself and I took it out towards those two more than anything else, which is why many original words sounded harsh and rude towards them. If you see any thing rude remaining, please let me know. The october holiday trip was trying on us all and I don't want to leave a bad impression about these two. We've become good friends and we've discussed any issues we had with each other.