I'd love to call this day 1 but since it only took 16 hours to leave San Francisco at 7am Saturday and land in Beijing at 2pm Sunday I'm not sure how to really define this day.
We had a layover in Vancouver, BC and it was so fun to see so many stores from my mission. I loved serving in Edmonton and Olds, AB and seeing Tim Horton's reminded me of so many fond memories. I just had to buy some TimBits. (I'm sure there are more Tim Horton's in Canada then Starbuck's in the US.)
I also got to introduce Scott to poutin: French fries covered in gravy and cheese. It is a delicious heart attack.
Once we got to Beijing it took us a few tries to find the right bus to the train station. Apparently there are multiple train stations in Beijing and you also have to buy a ticket to board the bus. We finally made it on...
The bus ride was nail-biting. They drive like maniacs! I wrote down all the things I saw on that hour bus ride in my little notebook (aka spy book according to Scott):
- a car backing up on the on-ramp
- multiple cars parked along the freeway side
- a lady driving on the wrong side of the road
- people walking along the freeway and even dodging traffic
- rediculous merging and continuous honking
- multiple taxis stopping in the middle of traffic to let out passengers
- hundreds of mopeds and bikes
OK, so it doesn't sound that bad but I'm telling you, it was crazy! I was on edge the entire ride.
We were the last people off the bus and Scott was having a hard time managing both suitcases. There were a bunch of people at the door trying to grab a piece but he kept refusing. At first I thought he was being a bit rude since they just wanted to help but once I got outside I realized they were trying to give us a 'ride' to the station. They followed us for a ways and kept yelling in Chinese. I still laugh at my naivety of that moment.
Our first job at the train station was to buy tickets back from Xi'an, you could only buy tickets 10 days in advance so we weren't sure we could get them to the States before we left. It took us a lot of walking and many confused pauses to finally find the English line. We waited for almost an hour in the hot humidity to finally learn that the teller didn't really speak English and you had to buy your tickets in Xi'an. What a start...
We had an awesome overnight ride to Xi'an. We shared this comfy abode with a nice Russian couple; they didn't speak English and we didn't know Russian. The poor conductor came by with an announcement but neither of us could understand. I hope it wasn't important! We had an awesome night's sleep on the ride to Xi'an. (Remember how awesome this was and contrast it to our ride back.)
Yum, gotta love cheese fries in all their shapes and forms. Sleeper cars with people who don't speak the same language as you are the best. When I went to Paris, we rode the sleeper car from Barcelona to Paris with an Asian lady and she kept trying to talk to us in whatever language she spoke. It was a bit of an awkward night. Good thing the point of a sleeper car is SLEEPING instead of socializing...
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