Finally able to relax in our beds for the 23 hour train ride home!
The baby pandas were hilarious to watch roll around on this platform.
Hanging out in Rachel's hometown. Rachel is on the left.
A ping-pong area at a park in Guangzhou.
Joe, me, Kirk, Nathan T, and Nathan M at a historic chrch wall in Macau.
Mandi and I at the panda reserve in Chengdu.
I tend to end my blogs with something along the lines of "That's pretty much all that's been going on with me." I have to confess, for the last few updates I was lying a little.
For the past two months or so, one of my teammates (Mandi) and I have been "seeing" each other. If you're a Facebook friend you probably already know this, but we're now official. So that probably answers your question as to why so many single women around the world have been a little extra depressed these past few weeks!
There's a lot more I could write about her, but I'll just say that Mandi is incredible, and I'm really happy we're together! If you want to know more, just ask me!
Because of my month-long break for Spring Festival, I've been doing A LOT of traveling. Here's a few of the highlights from my break:
- Me, Kirk, and Nathan M (from my school) met up with Nathan T (he is with Zhong and teaches at another school in Wuhan) and Joe (my friend from high school) in Hong Kong. We had a great time. Toured the city, met up with some of our other foreign friends, and watched NFL playoff games in a western sports bar. We also went to Macau to see what that was like. We even turned $1.50 into $15.00!! That will probably be the end of gambling in my life. I like to go out on top.
- Because of so many people traveling during Spring Festival, we went to Hong Kong without knowing if/when we'd be able to get return tickets. Fortunately, Kirk was randomly talking to one of our old Chinese friends online who now lives in Guangzhou (a nearby city). He helped us buy return bus tickets so we could make it back in time to visit another friend's home for the Chinese New Year.
- A big group of us visited one of our Chinese friend's (Rachel) home for the actual day of Chinese New Year. She lives in a small city by China's standards. It was fun to get to know her family and see what an average family does for this holiday.
- After a few days at home, my last trip was to Chengdu. A large city in the west of China that is famous for its' spicy food and being the home of pandas. Chengdu is easily one of my favorite cities in China. Besides the pandas (which were entertaining to watch wrestle with each other), it has a great mix of Chinese and western culture. The people there are all very friendly as well.
- It would be impossibly long for me to completely explain our trip back from Chengdu, so I'll try to give you the main events. Due to more traffic than we expected on the way to the station, we missed our train home. That is, all of us except for Nathan T who got on the train to try to stall it for everyone else. He tried, but the train started moving and then they wouldn't let him off to come back and join the rest of us! The four of us remaining then went to a ticket exchange booth. The best option they had was for standing-room only tickets for a 23-hour ride! We knew it would be terrible, but we just wanted to get home, so we got those tickets. As we got on the train, one of the workers told us that there might be some open beds in another car on the train. However, we first had to jam ourselves and our bags into a car with almost no room for an hour. After that, the worker told us there were in fact some beds up front. We paid her the price difference for the standing tickets, and then she led us up to our beds. There's much more to the story, but hopefully that gives you at least a little bit of the craziness we experienced that day!
- A big group of friends, mostly from our Zhong team, came to my apartment to watch the Super Bowl. I wish I had remembered to get a picture of all 16 people crammed into my small living room to watch through my slingbox program. We had a blast cheering on our teams and eating the pancakes and cinnamon rolls that Rebecca and Taylor made. And as a Colts fan, I'm always happy to see the Patriots lose in Indy!
That's pretty much what I've been up to lately. This time I mean it!
Hope you're all doing well!
Psalm 91:3
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