Blogger Blocked in China

UPDATE: I can now justify align, bold and hyperlink text. This proxy business isn't exactly user-friendly! Next stop, pictures...

Hi all,

As far as I can tell, China has decided to block Blogger. For the time being, I'm posting on Blogger through a proxy site that allows me to bypass the censors. It's not ideal, but it works so far (I think). Also, Youtube has been blocked in China for the past two or three months. It's really getting annoying considering the amount of time Melissa and I spend on the internet.

This is the first time that I haven't been able to access my own blog via regular methods, and I've got to say that it's much more infuriating than I originally expected it to be. There are just so many things I'd like to say about this, but the one thing that I'd like to leave you with is that I now hate Jackie Chan.

Growl,

Cullen

This is a Lovely-BU YAO!!

There has been one travel destination that has eluded Melissa and me for the longest time. It seemed as though everybody we know has been there, and the Lonely Planet book called it a must-see! What is this place? A mountainous town in northern Guangxi province called Yangshuo!

Our students were testing Monday - Wednesday, which meant that we did not have to teach or anything for five days including the weekend. So we booked an overnight train to Guilin (the jumping-off point for Yangshuo) and packed our crap! We only managed to get hard-seat tickets, so the twelve hour train ride was a nightmare. Hard-seats are booths of two facing hard benches that fit three people each. In the middle is a tiny table connected to the wall, but this addition doesn't provide any extra leg room. Melissa claimed to not be able to sleep, so she spent most of her time trying to get me to sleep (AWWWWW!!!!).

We arrived in Guilin before 6:00am, and were almost immediately intercepted by touts. These touts were trying to lead us to hotels or restaurants, but we found that the touts just kept on coming, no matter where we were. We got to Yangshuo fairly early in the morning by bus and had the unpleasant task of walking the tout-gauntlet to find a decent hostel. In addition to the things listed before, they were trying to push bamboo river cruises, flutes of various make, postcards, books, bike excursions, t-shirts, and more.

The touts were everywhere, but it was easy enough (although infinitely annoying) to dismiss them by saying, "xie xie, bu yao," which roughly means 'no thanks.' However, we ran into one tout who would not leave us alone as we tried to absorb the riverside view. She was followed us over to the esplanade area, casually stood beside us as if she too were taking in the marvellous view and began to hawk her bamboo river cruise. We declined, but she would not go away. It was as though as long as we were there, she would continue her sales pitch. It was SO ANNOYING! Just look at the above picture!

So, the touts almost spoiled the trip for me, but I don't want to sound like too much of a Grumpy Gus! We did soak in some of the better activities, which I will tell about in another post. In all, I'm just glad that we got to cross off the trip from our to-do list.

Cullen

The Mystery of the Missing Bucket

Melissa and I got back from a weekend trip to Wuhan late at night this past Sunday. When we got to the staircase that leads solely to our two apartments, we found the gate ajar. Melissa got freaked out because she clearly remembers locking the gate before leaving (the barber actually mimed that she should do this). What was even more strange was that the floors of the staircase were cleaned of the usual filth, and our trash bucket, which was located outside our door, was missing! Somebody took our trash bucket! We opened the door to our apartment and found that all of our possessions were still intact, which was a great relief. The mystery of missing bucket would have to wait until Monday.

We didn't find any leads during day, but come nightfall, the plot thickened. Melissa and I were getting ready for bed, when we heard footsteps coming up the stairs. The pit-pats came to our door and continued up the stairs. When they got to the apartment above us, we heard the door open and then footsteps above us inside the third floor apartment.

Melissa and I have the only sets of keys to the above apartment. It is supposed to be available to the second volunteer foreign teacher. However, we live together in the second floor apartment because we like seeing each other a lot. This means that the third floor apartment is supposed to be vacant. Ever since the beginning of school, I have been going up to that apartment at night to check out any weird noise because I had this craving to catch somebody trying to live there. When this happened, I was itching to go up there to catch the burglar in action. Melissa even came with me because the noises were so distinct!

We ascended the stairs, unlocked the door and pulled it open. Standing before us was an older Chinese woman trying to explain something to us. Melissa asked, "Do you live here?" in Chinese, and she replied, "Yes." I didn't understand any of this, so I walked in a little further to see what was going on. I looked into the study and found it converted into a bedroom. But what was in the bed was the real shocker. A man under the sheets slowly turned over and peered at me, and I recognized him as Headmaster Li!

I apologized to both of them, as it seemed that I had disturbed the Headmaster's slumber. Totally confused doesn't even begin to describe our state as we went back into our apartment. Before going to sleep, we called our liaison, and she promised to ask around about what might be happening. Needless to say, we were agitated.

She called back today telling us that the Headmaster's apartment, which is right below ours on the first floor, is too wet. So, he decided that he would move to the much drier third floor apartment without telling us. Now, this inconveniences us because we have English Corner up there every Tuesday at 5:15pm. He promised to find us a room for English Corner, but we've heard that promise before. Our plan is to not tell anyone to avoid the third floor apartment. The students will probably go up there later today, knock on the door and be met by a confused Headmaster!

So, what ever happened to the bucket that so mysteriously disappeared? As of now, I can only speculate that it now resides in some crappy janitor's closet after being used to clean the floors of the staircase. What a terrible fate for our beloved trash bucket!

Cullen

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Class This Morning...

Today began like any other day... I let the alarm snooze for twenty minutes, bitterly showered and left for my morning class. As I descended the staircase to the basketball courts, I was met by the smiling face of the barber. He was folding his freshly-washed towels, when I noticed that his gaze had drifted to a spot away from my face. At first, I thought he was staring at the teddy bear that I had in my hands, which would make sense because today is the first day that I used the teddy bear as a teaching prop. But no. As I attempted to move outside of his reach, he beckoned me over for a morning handshake (just what I wanted to avoid) with a more-excited-than-usual air about him. He then grabbed my hand in way that suggested a handshake, but acted as a restraint and firmly planted his other hand on my - ahem. Oh, and he didn't even miss a little bit. It's like he had been finely-tuning his aim for this moment or something. Stunned, I gave a pathetic, little chuckle and shuffled off to class.

Apparently I'm not the first victim of his groping, as I learned that this had happened to last year's male volunteer as well. To be clear, it wasn't a grab, but was more of a pat, like he meant to tell me that he sees me through my pants or something. I don't really know why he decided to do this, but if his goal was to make me feel self-conscious right before getting up in front of sixty-five fourteen year olds, then bravo.

Cullen

Contact!

Okay, so after about a week of brooding, Melissa and I finally had to make contact with our liaison. I think it was because we ran out of cooking gas. Anyhoo, Rock told us that Mr. Li told her what he said to us the day after he said it. She said that she was shocked and apologized for it. Well, we didn't want to seem indignant or whatever, and we apologized for associating our vegetarianism with Rong Jia Wan. So, we got into an apologize-off, and I think that we won. You see, she said that Mr. Li was also sorry, but Mr. Li didn't actually say sorry (or anything, so far) to us. So it was Melissa and me apologizing to Rock and vice versa. After a few minutes of trying to get the apologetic upper-hand, we were glad that the weirdness had gone away, for the most part.

Have not run into Mr. Li yet, but I don't expect too much when we do. Maybe a cricket will chirp, maybe more. Who knows...

Cullen

Oh No You Di'int!

Cullen: Okay, so we were at our town's open market the other weekend in search of dumpling wrappers (this is where the best ones are located). Now, every single time we enter this place (that stinks with the moist stench of death), we have no choice but to witness animal slaughter. And it's not just any animal that's being abused, imprisoned and slaughtered before our eyes. It's countless stray dogs. Usually when we go, we see skinned and gutted dogs hanging from hooks through their mouths with their fur and guts splattered on the concrete below. Also, we are witness to these poor dogs being imprisoned in filthy cages. However, when we went on this specific occasion, it was like it was the day before some sort of Chinese Thanksgiving that serves dog as the main dish.

Melissa: We'll spare you the gory details, simply because we want you to continue to come back and visit our blog without losing sleep at night or waking up screaming if you do get any sleep, but I'll just tell you that it was like nothing I have ever seen in my life, in person or PETA video. It was a week ago or so and the images and sickening cries are still fresh in my mind. Mind you, not a single person at the market winced, let alone seemed to notice, aside from us. This is simply a cultural divergence that we will of course respect and perhaps accept in due time. Yet it rekindled in us an urge to re-explore our inner vegetarians, as we agreed that simply avoiding dog's meat would only quell our conscience as far as we could see, but not what we know to be true: that whatever abuse we were seeing here against dogs was happening around the world, including in our own country, to cows, pigs, chickens, turkeys, and any other animal that humankind sees fit to eat. As you may know, and as Cullen will never be able to forget as I remind him constantly, I was a vegetarian for five years starting in high school and throughout the entirety of college. When I traveled to Ecuador and lived in Armenia, cultural norms and call for sensitivity overwhelmed my instincts to avoid meat, and so I broke my vegetarianism to avoid offending my hosts. Now seemed like the perfect opportunity to take it up once again, given the inspiring scene at the market.

Cullen: And take it up we did, but before doing so, Melissa told our liaison about what we saw and that it bothered her. I remember Melissa getting off the phone with her and worrying that she took her the wrong way. Melissa told me that she kept apologizing for her people, which was not what Melissa was getting after. Her whole point was not that the mistreatment and slaughter was being conducted by Chinese people, but that it was being conducted at all. In any case, we started eating vegetarian, which really isn't difficult for us to do, as we almost always cook for ourselves. However, a couple of days ago, our school told us that we needed to give a class to about two hundred Junior students from all over the county and judge their oral English competition. This entailed a dinner at a restaurant with some of the school's teachers and a few of the organizers.

We just got back from the dinner and the classes. The dinner had a good number of vegetarian dishes, which was arranged by our liaison and our head teacher. We were surprised by this and are grateful for their accommodating menu. The dinner went fairly smoothly, although they did expect me to pack away beers like a fridge right before my class (about magic, of all things...) to the young Junior students. The oldest teacher was also at the table, and he kept egging me on to eat some of the meat dishes. I think that by not eating meat, it may have been seen as a disrespect towards the purveyors of our meal, as meat dishes tend to be the most expensive. I can also see that vegetarianism is seen as a weakness to some Chinese people, as they took satisfaction in watching me eat a little bit of bacon that they placed in my bowl. So, eating vegetarian at a Chinese restaurant tends to be awkward when eating with Chinese people.

Melissa: After dinner, we gave our "lectures" to about 200 junior students from around the county in one of our school's lecture halls. Cullen, as he mentioned, spoke about magic, and I gave a presentation on ecosystems. One of the English teachers in our school, Mr. Li, followed by thanking us for speaking and illuminated virtues of each lesson: first, he described what he would do with the magic hat Cullen spoke of in his lesson. Then, he added to my lesson that it is our responsibility to protect the environment. Both were welcome and constructive additions to our lectures, I thought to myself at that point. Then, Mr. Li proceeded to discuss our recent conversion to vegetarianism, which went a little something like this:

Cullen and Melissa have decided to become vegetarians after seeing the meat market in our own Rong Jia Wan. They found the treatment of animals in the market to be cruel. Yet Americans are killing Iraqi people in the Iraq war. Americans are in Iraq, fighting and killing Iraqi people. I don't understand why Cullen and Melissa would be vegetarians.

I don't believe that this statement warrants commentary on my part, especially because I wouldn't know where to begin in describing how offensive, uncalled for, and inappropriate those audacious remarks were, not only within the context of this forum, but at all, considering the fact that Mr. Li never broached the subject with us before coming to his own conclusions on the matter. I will say that for as intoxicated as Mr. Li claimed to be, he spoke with astonishing clarity, eloquence, and extent on the topic of our dubious moral code.

Cullen: Melissa really nailed that quote. As he said it, my face lit up with the heat of embarrassment, and I could not bring myself to take my eyes away from the floor. That thought belonged in the heat of argument instead of in our introductions to two hundred young Chinese students. Not only did he spread a great deal of misinformation about us, but he insulted us in front of everybody. After fuming about this for a few hours, my thoughts keep coming back to the way our liaison responded to Melissa the first time she told her about the mistreated dogs. She reacted as if we condemned China; as if she were expected to apologize for the traditional customs of her great and many countrymen.

Melissa: Following Mr. Li's lovely speech, Cullen fielded questions during a Q & A session, and Mr. Li attempted to make small talk with me. Being the type A personality that I am, I found it impossible to smile and nod and ignore the obvious. I asked him if he knew that I was a vegetarian in the United States as well, to which of course he responded that he didn't. Some of Cullen's type B personality found it's way into my subconsciousness and told me not to take it any further than that, although the urge to fully confront him has not been satiated. Stay tuned for further developments, as I contemplate getting all up in his grill.

Last Minute Notice

Strange things are a-brewing here at Yueyang No. 1... I thought that since we missed the sports days when we visited Hong Kong, we were off the hook for the relay race, jump rope, etc. Turns out, we have the teachers' sports day in a half hour from now. It's cold outside and I'm not feeling so well, so I'm not too pleased with this. On the bright side, we have Monday through Wednesday off of next week, so we are trying to plan another vacation. We're thinking Shanghai, but it's tempting to just go back to Hong Kong. 

When did we learn all of this information? Why late last night, of course. There's never been enough time to properly plan a trip, so far. Oh well. So, I'll blaze through posting the rest of the Hong Kong photos for you before we take off for wherever!

Cullen

A Bunch of Stuff Happened

Cullen: I know that we haven't blogged in a while. So sorry. Me apologisey. We took one look at the results of our survey and came to the conclusion that we had nothing to say diary-wise. However, since we like blogging about our vacations so much, we thought we would take another trip! Okay, so maybe that wasn't the reason for the trip. Here goes...

Our school has been promising us that they would be holding a 'sports day' where we were expected to do a relay race, jump roping and a mystery basketball-type race. Needless to say, we were thrilled to be included in the events while the doctors have been telling us that we should avoid exercise while being treated for rabies. Thanks for caring, administration! Anyhoots, the events had been delayed a number of times due to the constant rainy weather we've been having here in Rong Jia Wan. They finally decided on a couple of non-rainy days last week, which was initially Wednesday and Thursday. We were then told with about 24 hours notice that the sports days would be Thursday and Friday. At last, a long weekend!!!! We pounced immediately and booked tickets to our travel destination. 

Melissa: Okay, fine, I'll go along with this, but only because I am your devoted, loving partner, and you are logged in under my account, thus involuntarily putting my stamp at the bottom as the signature of this "conversation".  So, after much hassle and several failed bookings on elong.com, we made it to Shenzhen, a Chinese port city only about an hour from Hong Kong, then crossed the border by bus.  It was warm, sunny, and palm trees abounded as we made our way to our hotel, the Marco Polo Hong Kong.

Cullen: Okay, I just got back to the computer and Melissa is telling me it's my turn. Apparently, she does not like keeping you guys informed through a collaborative blogging effort. And yes folks, we are blog-arguing in real time. 

Well, before we made it all the way down to Hong Kong (which is the coolest city I have ever visited, but more on that later) we had to clear up something. Our last rabies shots were supposed to be on Friday, so we had Rock take us down to the clinic at noon (the day we were to leave). Luckily, we were able to get these last shots. So now I don't have an excuse not to exercise. Rats. 

What else happened before we left for Hong Kong? We got new teaching schedules, and I could not be more jealous of Melissa's schedule. She has a four day weekend. Every week! Four days!! And I only have a two day weekend! I'm jealous!

Melissa: Back to the live-blogging argument.  Apparently, I do not have my own name-color.  I just have boring old blue.  Thanks, Cul, thanks for that.  Anyway, yes, I have an awesome schedule, but Cullen also had a day off during the last schedule, so he can't complain for a few weeks when my days off have caught up to his.  Well, I guess this is all we have to say for the time being until we can get some photos of the trip up, but I concur that Hong Kong was, in fact, the coolest, cleanest, dare I say prettiest city I have ever been to.  

Cullen: THAT'S RIGHT. BASH THE BLUE. What did blue ever do to you? I think it's a nice shade... I'm just jealous that you have a long weekend. My day off was a Tuesday. Whoopiddy doo. I still had to plan a lesson for Monday, and now I have earlier classes on Monday. So, now I can't plan the lesson on Monday morning. I literally weep myself to sleep every night in fits of jealousy.

Melissa: Pitiful.  For a year and a half I had to get to work earlier and leave hours later than him, and now he's nit-picking over the disbursement of endless free time.

Cullen: Touche. I lose. Anyways, a bunch of stuff happened, and I think we covered a lot of it.

Decision 2008: Attempt Number One

It was a rainy day here in Rong Jia Won, which is actually outside of the norm. You see, it's normally just as dark and hazy, but the dust that blows in my mouth makes me squirm as if I'm trapped inside some sort of a chemical toilet. However, when the clouds do decide to burst over this filthy town, I'm just a little bit grateful that it's finally getting a long-overdue bath. If this town were a Peanuts character, it would definitely be Pig-Pen.

It just so happens that the other day, I received my absentee ballot from my way awesome parents. After wrestling about five layers of clear packaging tape off of the envelope (thanks!), I triumphantly removed my prize and then spitefully cast it aside, as if to teach it a lesson for being so hard to reach. The next day, I filled it out (I will contribute to the Obamanation) and printed USA in rather large Chinese characters on the outside of the envelope. Thinking that this was enough for one day, I saved the dirty work for the next day. 

During my mid-day break between classes, I walked headlong into the Chinese drizzle, making sure to step in every damn puddle in my way (...) towards what I thought to be the post office. Now, I'm hardly used to the American post office, let alone the Chinese one. So, I wasn't really expecting much success from this trip. I arrived at a horrible little shop called China Post Postal Savings Bank, went in and stood on line with all the other Zhous. I soon realized that this was actually a bank, and I would look like a moron handing the teller my envelope to be mailed. I walked outside looked to the right and saw another building named China Post. I walked into that building, saw a woman sitting behind a long desk and handed her the envelope, knowing full well that I could be making a horrible mistake. She took the envelope, put it on a weighing tray and tried to look up its cost. After a minute, she handed it back to me and blabbered something. I knew I was defeated at that moment.

I may need a little more help than the American spirit the next time I try to mail my ballot. Perhaps I should bring a Chinese person? 

Cullen

Rong Jia Won: A Better Life

This crazy block of a building is the nearest supermarket to where we live. Its name is A Better Life, and it's about a two minute walk away from the main gate and a seven minute walk from our apartment. Pretty close, eh?

Now, as far as supermarkets go, our choices are fairly plentiful in Rong Jia Won. A Better Life has the advantage of being extremely close to where we live. Shorter walk = happy (fatter) Cullen. There is another supermarket that is probably about twelve minutes away that has a greater variety of items (think cheap-as-dirt clothing, weird cell phones, etc.). We've been calling this place Heart Market, as there is a big heart over its entrance. There is a third, but that one's pretty useless, so I won't talk about that one.

Ever since we got here, we've been using the closest market. But then, a few weeks ago things started to turn sour in our relationship...

First, they started to discontinue our favorite food: eggplant. We would cook that stuff all the time if we could. It was very frustrating. It made me seek eggplant elsewhere, such as at Heart Market, where it is plentiful and delicious.

Second, a few Saturdays ago, I went to A Better Life in search of french toast ingredients by myself. As I approached, a trio of tiny hooligans noticed me with great interest. They then began loudly asking (?) things in Chinese to me, to which I said, "Ni hao" and walked on by. They must have thought this was the funniest thing in the entire world, as they started laughing hysterically and followed me into the store. I passed by the security guard, hoping that he would stop them. No dice. I walked into the candy aisle, hoping they would get distracted by the sweets, but they kept on screaming and laughing all around me. I quickly grabbed my things, proceeded to the check-out lane and they accompanied me to the cashier, louder than ever. I exited and lost them as I crossed the street, hoping that they would follow me into oncoming traffic (kidding... or am I?). So, that was fun.

Third, an employee at A Better Life, who was a student at our school, keeps trying to start English conversations that Melissa and I keep needing to repair, as she doesn't speak very well. She has asked us for our cell phone numbers maybe four times now. It's ridiculous. Recently, she literally ran up to us (I could hear a rapid clop-clop-clop coming from behind us) and presented us with a card saying that she wanted to give it to us. She then said that it is for one hundred dollars. We were pretty stunned at first because it was a generous gift, but then we were confused because she kept on saying that it is for dollars (I think one hundred dollars equals something like seven hundred kuai). THEN, she tells us it doesn't have any money on it, but that we need to add "one hundred dollars" to it to use it. Right, lady. Sure. By that time, I had the card in my hands and had noticed how worn it looked. Melissa and I tried to find an exit from this scam, but then she told us that we needed to "help her" by adding our money to it. Melissa and I pitilessly said we'd think about it and made our great escape to the cashier.

In short, I'd now rather walk the extra five minutes to the Heart Market. I'm gonna be so fit!

Cullen

Too Lazy to Cook. Bon Appetite!

I'm experiencing a general feeling of laziness recently. Above is lazy food in China. This is the only way to get your daily allowances of tomatoes and aromatic crispy chicken!

Has the MSG slowed me down? Has culture shock grabbed me by the throat? Are my students and non-students wearing me out? Wait, that sounds about right. Yeah, that's the one. 

I teach Senior 1 students (think of them as high school sophomores) twelve times a week and on top of that have extracurricular 'English Corners' with them. Now, this isn't so bad, but when all of the Senior 2 and Senior 3 students who miss their foreign teachers of past years see me, they automatically want to hang out with me at my apartment. 

They don't come over all that much, but when they do, they give very little or (usually) no warning before they knock on my door. What's annoying about these little meetings is that the students are the ones who dictate how long they stay. They know their schedule and come into my apartment thinking to themselves that they have X amount of time, so I should talk about 1, 2, 3 &4 and then suddenly leave.

The students themselves are very nice and thirst for an opportunity to speak English with me, so I'm not against meeting them. However, I just feel like I need a little space, which is impossible on this campus. I live right outside the basketball courts, which is full of students playing basketball all the time. Whenever I leave my apartment, I'm a spectacle and continue to be a spectacle until I get back inside my apartment.

Having said that, I guess I'm experiencing culture shock, too.

Cullen

Our Scenic Trip Back From Vacation

Melissa and I may have told you about this already, but I thought I might as well document this tale here as well. On the Saturday we were to return to RJW from Wulingyuan, fate decided that we would take the scenic route. We had planned on taking the minibus from Wulinyuan to Zhang Jia Jie, a bus to Changsha and yet another bus to RJW. However, we did not take the China-factor (nothing goes as planned here) into account. 

We woke up at 8:00 a.m., left the apartment by 8:30 a.m., took the town bus over to the bus station and left on the 9:00a.m. bus from Wulingyuan to Zhang Jia Jie. We arrived in the Zhang Jia Jie bus station at around 10:30 a.m. after an uncomfortable ride (the seat-back in front of Melissa was broken and the smelly passenger who sat there was basically lying in her lap). Mind you, it was raining constantly that day, which added about five bails of hay to our figurative camel's back. 

When we got to the ZJJ bus station I knew that we were on a very strict schedule, as the bus that we needed to catch from Changsha to RJW leaves at 4:00 p.m. I did my best to procure us two bus tickets at the earliest possible time, but my Chinese only went so far. I got the two tickets, but they we for the 1:00 p.m. bus. Upon realizing this, I went from agitated to upset, as I knew that we would have to wing it in Changsha.

We killed a few hours in an internet cafe, got on our bus, realized that we did not have seats together and I proceeded to mime my protests to the bus attendant. After a few minutes of pointing and acting like a baby, the attendant finally moved some people and I got to sit with Melissa on our four hour bus ride to Changsha. About halfway through our ride, we stopped at a rest stop and about half of the bus poured out to use the facilities. I thought it wise to wait a few minutes to let the fellow travellers clear out before I went in. I came out a few minutes later to find my bus driving away. I ran up to the bus, flagged it down and sat next to a terrified Melissa. Lesson learned.

We got into Changsha via the West bus station well after the last bus to RJW left, and Melissa dragged me kicking and screaming over to a noodle shop for some much-needed food. It was still pouring in Changsha, so hailing a taxi to get to the train station was extremely difficult. Melissa took charge of the situation and got us a taxi to the East bus station, which took longer than I think it should have. We got out and Melissa wanted to know where the trains were, and I angrily told her that the train station is not here (I assumed that she wanted to take a bus when she told the driver to go to the East station, but she didn't realize that the East bus station is completely separate from the train station). Not my proudest moment.

Melissa asked some bystanders where the bus to Yueyang is and they pointed to the nearest bus. She asked the bus driver if he was going to Yueyang, and he said, "blah, blah, blah, Yueyang, blah." That was good enough for us, so we boarded and took our seats, fuming at each other. The guy sitting next to me was talking on his cell phone, so I listened in to try to hear if he said Yueyang. Lo and behold, he said Yueyang. I felt much more comfortable at that point.

It wasn't until about an hour into the trip that we noticed something wrong. We saw mountains, and the road didn't look familiar. You see, Yueyang is a very flat area, but I thought that we must be coming in from another area, an area that I had not seen before. The bus stopped in a very dark, random back-alley bus station, and we found ourselves utterly lost. While we tried to figure out where to go, a crowd of people started to form around us. I kept asking them where Yueyang County No. 1 Middle School is in Mandarin, but the few people who seemed interested in helping us just looked at me like I was crazy. That's when it started to hit me. I pointed to the ground, said, "Yueyang", and the man pointed to the ground and said, "Liuyang". 

Melissa, rightly so, pulled me away from the crowd to find a taxi (thieves come out at night). We flagged one down, called up our Chinese liaison, and gave the phone to the driver. He talked with her for a minute, handed me the phone and she informed me that we had taken a bus to Liuyang, two hours in the wrong direction (Fun fact: Liuyang is the fireworks capital of the world). Melissa and I freaked out for about a half hour and weighed our options. We could have stayed that night with a volunteer who lives twenty miles outside the city, or go back to Changsha via taxi for 300 kuai. In the end, we decided to go back to Changsha, mostly due to my insistence that we just get this trip over with. It was a two hour ride back to Changsha, and it was already 8:00 p.m.

Our only transportation option in Changsha was the train, so we had the driver go there. He was actually supposed to come into the ticket office and buy our tickets for us, but we hit a traffic jam right outside the station, so he couldn't park. We jumped out of the cab, mid-traffic jam and headed for the ticket window. Luckily, we spotted a girl who looked as though she went to school (these people tend to speak English, if you can find them). We introduced ourselves to 'Lollipop', and asked her to help us buy the tickets. After that, she led us into the station and showed us where we needed to wait for our 11:30 p.m. train to Yueyang. It turned out that we had standing room only tickets. We said good-bye, and she left us to ourselves.

While waiting for the train, we were struck by the sheer amount of people in the station sitting, standing and sleeping on the floor. Among these people was a group of German-looking folk. They saw us and didn't seem interested in conversation, much to my relief (they looked weird). Later, while standing, an Iranian-looking fellow appeared to our left. I think that I thought he was Iranian because he was thin, had dark hair, had olive skin, was wearing a tunic-looking shirt and was peeling an orange with a switchblade. Well, my profile was way off, as it turns out that he is an Italian student backpacking around China. We got to talking, and it turned out that he had the same ticket as us. Yay! A new (temporary) friend!

In China, when trains come into the station, the people who are boarding line up, get their ticket checked and run like Hell to their train. They do this because most people buy standing room only tickets, but take a seat on the train. They do this in hopes that the seat has not been taken. If somebody with a ticket comes to the seat, that person then kicks the other person out of his/her seat.

However, when our train was called, a HUGE line formed, and when the line wasn't going fast enough, the people in the back of the line bum-rushed another entrance to the platform. Since we were in the back of the line, we thought, "What the heck. Why not?" and hurdled over the rows of seats in our way to get to the newly-opened gate. 

The train itself looks like it was pulled out of an old movie (think of the train from Young Frankenstein for inspiration). There were already hundreds, if not thousands, of people on the train, and not a seat could be found. Packed together like vertical sardines, we departed at 11:45 p.m. Take a look at the below picture (got from internet) for an idea of what the standing room only train is like, and realize that our train was much, much worse:

We did not have a convenient place to put our backpack, so we kept it with us. A few men about twenty feet away cleared a space above them for our pack, but we were not in the trusting mood. We stood all the way to Yueyang and got off our train at about 1:15 a.m. Probably the highlight of the trip, aside from meeting the friendly Italian, was the discovery of our liaison and her boyfriend waiting for us outside of the Yueyang train station. They had been waiting for us for about an hour, and intended to make sure that we did not get lost again. After saying good-bye to our Italian friend, they took us home via taxi (with a pit stop at the taxi gas station), and we arrived in RJW at about 2:30 a.m. I don't think we can ever thank Rock and William enough for helping us that day.

All in all, we travelled from Wulingyuan to Zhang Jia Jie to Changsha to Liuyang to Changsha to Yueyang to Rong Jia Won. The bolded city names in the previous sentence can be found on this map:

This experience almost ruined our vacation to Zhang Jia Jie National Park. However, whenever I got upset, Melissa tried her best to cheer me up and when she got upset, I tried my best to cheer her up. It was incredibly stressful, but there were many times when I actually enjoyed myself. If anything, we can look back on this experience and laugh.

Cullen