Golden Week

Officially: May 1- May 7.
My Golden Week began April 29 with a crazy NIGHT train ride from Weihai to Jinan. If I had been able to move more freely, I would have considered snapping a photo to document the insanity, but... Imagine the scene: Nadeige and I boarded the train in Weihai at 8.22 pm along with several hundred others. Having attempted to purchase beds in the sleeper car (and having failed despite visiting the ticket office a mere 20 minutes after the tickets officially went on sale), we folded our bodies into the not-so-comfortable hard-seats. Sitting across from us (benches accomodate 2 people on one side, three on the other with shared legroom) was a lady and her husband who were travelling to America. Translation: big-ass suitcase in our legroom. Remember this is a night train. The lights remained on the entire night. People held conversations as if it were 3 pm not am. The train stopped about every hour and more people boarded. You may wonder, on a completely full train, how is it possible that more people could board? Well, they happened to purchase "standing room" tickets. Which means they were in the aisles, hotwater area, bathrooms, and doors. And, because it was night, many of them decided to pop a squat for a short snooze. We all tried to snooze and every so often someone needed to smoke, or go to the bathroom...this caused the domino effect of everyone having to wake up and move to let the person by. Or, maybe more people got on and the situation had to be adjusted to make room for them. The train ride was a short one--8 pm to 5 am. We arrived in Jinan, and I felt remarkably energetic for the hour or so that I slept. I had found it more amusing to watch the scene develop on the train. Geez...I still can't get over how crazy it was.

We took a taxi from the train station to Shandong University (our mother campus). Sat in the lobby of the dormitory for foreign exchange students and ate a scrumptious breakfast of toast, boiled eggs, cheese, and coffee. Oh, I think there might have been some sweet bread as well. At about 8 am, we loaded back up and walked around the city. Visited a Catholic Cathedral (I use this term loosely) and then decided that our backpacks were too heavy for our tired bodies. Back to the dorm where we left the bags and set out again to chill around the city. At about 11 am we met up with friends, Eric and Sung-Fen for a chat and some lunch. And I was a lazy bum and took a glorious 30 minute nap! A little cheese and red wine later... we were on our way to the airport.

Our flight was delayed so we had yet another opportunity to nap. One that we seized by accident and nearly missed the announcement to board for Xi'an. By the time we got to Xi'an, took the airport bus to the city, took a taxi to our hostel, we were hungry and very tired. Had a simple meal that, from the price, you'd have thought it was extravagant. This is one thing that I do believe I have had enough of--getting ripped off by people who think I am a tourist and not a Chinese-salary-earning teacher. But, anyways. Called it an early evening.

Woke up Tuesday morning early and set out for the city. I figured out the maps and buses so we public-transported it to the city. Attempted to get information about climbing Hua Shan, a sacred mountain, and were not entirely successful. Well, I suppose it depends on what you would classify as success: we got lots of information. Unfortunately, it was all different information and most of it contradicted previously received information. We let this slide and headed to the Muslim area where we browsed the winding street of goodies, saw the Mosque, and ate lunch (street food). We also picked up some snacks for the upcoming trek up the mountain (we originally intended to do this Tuesday night so we could watch the sunrise, but we were told this wasn't possible by a couple of people and that it was by a few others AND not wanting to take the 2 hour bus ride out there just to find out that we were stuck for the night, we decided to hike it Wednesday).

Wednesday woke up around 5.30 am to be out the door at 6 am to be at the bus-stop for the first bus to Hua Shan. We were successful and settled into our seats, drank our powdered coffee, and had some breakfast. Couple hours later we were at the foot of the mountain only to learn that we were not at the entrance at which we wished to be. Begin: 1.5 hrs of trying to get information on how to get to the other entrance/walk to the other entrance. End: said time. We gave up and decided to hike up the Soldier's Path. Translation: 1600m of elevation laid out in stairs. They should have this pre-programmed into the next version of the StairMaster. I swear. Nadeige and I shared the load of our day pack--approx 4 liters of water, 2 cameras, 1 bottle of sunscreen, 4 bananas, 2 apples, 2 boxes of juice, 1 bag of dried fruit, 1 back of cashews, 1 block of cheese, 1 loaf of bread, and perhaps some other things that were heavy but I cannot recall at this moment. Now that I list these things, it doesn't seem like a lot, but it sure FELT like a lot when my legs lugged it up the mountain. The best news of the day: the pack only got lighter as we climbed and ate!! =)

I was fairly disappointed with what was on top of the mountain, namely, an outrageously expensive hotel and a couple of theme-park quality restaurants. We parked our fannies and ate our lunch then took a couple of photos and then tried to head to one of the other five peaks (we were on the north peak). For our efforts, we were herded into a line of people by a few confused boys in uniforms. After 30 minutes of standing in this line without moving, an official-looking man barked something at the confused boys and they attempted to make a crowd of about 200 people form a three-person wide line. HA! hahahahaha. Long story short: we were told to go back down the mountain and we didn't fight because we were just too tired by the frustrations of the day and climb. The line that we were in was a line to the cable-cars. So, we had to take those down. Again, no complaint there as I was ready to get a-way from these people and the cars seemed to be the fastest route to that end. Once we were down the mountain, we took the shuttle bus to the bus-stop where we waited almost 2 hours for a bus back home. Exhaustion was setting in and when news came that one bus was broken and we'd have to wait for another, I really was beyond caring. So much that I didn't pay attention to the fact that the replacement bus was a city bus. Translation: the usual 2 hour ride turned into 3.5 hrs on hard plastic seats. Same price as the fast and comfortable bus, by the way. So, all in all, Wednesday was probably the MOST frustrating day of them all.

Thursday--another early morning to take the tour to the Terracotta Soldiers, some hotspring pools, a mound of dirt a.k.a. a tomb, and some souvenir stops. Once we actually got to the soldiers, we were amazed that so little had been uncovered in the 30 years or so since the discovery. Took the necessary photos (a task not quite so easy since the lighting in most of the pits were quite dim) in the two-hour alotted time, and then headed back to the city.

Friday we slept in, purchased our lunch at the grocery store, and then headed to the Melody Hotel to take the shuttle back to the airport. Sitting across the aisle from us was a couple whose flight time was 7 pm and who were on the 11 am shuttle. This fact gave me a moment's worry and then Nadeige said they were crazy and we would be fine. And we were. Back to Jinan where we crashed at Eric's place. Had a mild fight, mostly from the irritation and exhaustion that comes from a week of travelling with the entire Chinese population, but solved it by a calm dinner at a Chinese version of a Hibatchi-style restaurant, a French movie, and a bottle of red wine. During the screening of the movie, I received no less than 32 bug bites!

Saturday's mission was finding Nadeige a new pair of jeans (the zipper on her last pair was broken). Getting downtown proved a bit difficult as our first set of directions had us headed south (we wanted to go north). Fortunately, we realized we were going in the wrong direction, and I asked the man sitting next to us for help. How lucky we were that I asked when I did (two stops later we needed to change buses) and that he DID know how to get us to the right place--he was even getting off at our stop. So, the trip took a bit longer than expected but we were safely downtown and we spent the next 3 hours or so perusing the area. Nadeige got her jeans and I some shirts (several 2007 World Cup leftovers!! =). A funny story: we stopped at one shop on the sidewalk and asked the price of a shirt. The lady, avoiding our question, replied that nothing in her store was big enough for us foreigners. Saturday night we had some bruchette (BBQ) and a good 5 hours of French conversation...for me that meant 5 hours ofFrench listening exercises with short bits translated/discussed in Spanish to test my comprehension.

Sunday, another low-key day. Moseyed around in the morning. Packed (a great feat for both of us as we had purchased a bit of things during the week). Met up with another lot of French people. More French listening exercises. Trip to buy cheese. Then, we had more bruchette. This time it was close to a river/sewer-like body of water. I'm still puzzled by what it was. It looked pretty dirty but the water WAS moving and people were washing their clothes in it and filling up water-jugs (this scared me). However, it smelled a bit like a sewer. Anyways, we sat at miniature tables next to this water and had some BBQ-ued squid and beer. It was good. We thought that we had lost track of time and we rushed back to the appartment, grabbed our stuff, hopped in a cab and got halfway to the train station before I realized it was an hour earlier than we had thought. So, we had some time to kill in which I managed to amuse myself by randomly flipping through the French-English dictionary and writing down the amusing words I found. Nadeige rolled her eyes but patiently corrected all my pronunciation errors (she is an incredibly patient teacher, I swear).

One last evening of travelling--12 midnight to 7 am. This time, there was no big suitcase, and I had the window seat (a.k.a. instant headrest) so I actually got several hours of sleep. Nadeige fared worse, but we were both awake for the morning news that was kindly blasted through the train at 6.00 am to awaken the masses. When we got back to Shanda, we were amused to find that the latest progress on the main gate included a fence completely barring entrance! Even the taxi driver laughed at how crazy this was.