Busy wanderings

Hi y'all!

It's been a while (sorry)... I've been traipsing about the country for a while, and busy busy busy!

This last week, the 1st- 7th was National Day holiday here in the Middle Kingdom. Which meant we had off of school!! (fist pump)

So, like all teachers off of school, I took the liberty of sleeping in. But I also traveled inland a bit to the city of Wuhan. A fellow FoC city where my friends live. I'd never been there, and this seemed like the perfect time to go.

So, my roommate Carina and I left on a Thursday night train arriving in Wuhan at 7 am.

We took hard seats for the trip. Which is the equivalent of hard airplane seats.

Why??

Well, for starters they were less than half the price of the sleepers (beds) and I figured if I could sleep on a plane, then I could sleep on a train right?

WRONG.

China has this thing, where they have a billion people. Yeah. And national holiday is a time when they all go home. Which means that every mode of transportation is over crowded. This train was no different. So, we were lucky really to have seats. There were probably two dozen people with 'standing room' tickets. Which meant that they had to stand/crouch or sit on the floor for the 8 hour trip. Basically, there are people everywhere. The seat that I had was on the end of a row at the end of the car. I was sitting next to a crowd of people who were crouching/sitting on the floor. One man was sitting next to me on top of his luggage. My shoulder and his butt were fast friends (huge eye roll!) There was even a short time when he was falling asleep and he was nodding off onto my shoulder. A quick elbow to the ribs solved that problem. (don't gasp, everyone is extremely rude when traveling.)

The trip back was better. There was less luggage underfoot, and no one leaning on me. And the smell was better because we were not next to the bathroom.

Okay, so now that you've been throughly horrified about travel in China... Don't worry, it's only like that during the holidays.

What did I do in Wuhan???

I visited coffee street and got some more coffee. I'm almost out of the coffee I brought from America, so it was a good thing.

Walked along the river.

Took a ferry boat ride across the river (it was essentially a bus fare to get across)

Visited art street, and food street... both very very crowded.

Spent an afternoon at the Hubei Art Museum. Very cool, and relaxing. I enjoy art so much. There was one very interesting piece that was geometric cross type patterns painted on tartan... Yup. A painting on Scottish plaid. How cool!!

OH! I almost forgot. We watched the Packer-Viking football game Friday morning when we arrived.

I made banana bread for my host and friend Becca.

And we visited a beautiful Buddhist temple and climbed a pagoda where we could see much of the city.

We went to the shop called Mr. Mai's two times for homemade apple pie. The owner is from Louisiana, and it was a taste of home for sure!

I had a ton of fun, and I'm glad for the experience in a new city. The differences in China between provinces is so great... Just going over two means there are so many new and different foods to try, and the people are so different, and the culture is even different.

I'm off now, gotta go to class and teach my students about American food/ restaurants.
(We're gonna watch a VeggieTales clip. =) )

Until next time.