Chengdu

The second half of our long vacation was spent in Chengdu.  Unlike all of our other vacation destinations, I'd never been to this city, so I wasn't sure what to expect.  Our train to Chengdu from Xi'an was a bit confusing.  We had two tickets stapled together, but the train number was the same on both tickets.  We weren't sure if this meant we'd change trains or just change cars at a certain point.  The first tickets were for two hours on hard seats and the other tickets were for 14 hours on hard sleepers.  An hour into the journey, everyone starting asking what we were supposed to do once we got to the change ticket station.  Soren and I didn't know any better than anyone else and I just said, "We probably need to find someone who speaks English to help us."  By saying this, I was hoping that some Chinese person nearby would step up...which didn't happen.  I was also hoping that one of the teachers would tap somebody on the shoulder and ask...which also didn't happen.  Feeling burdened with head teacher-ness, I knew I had to figure something out.
I decided to get up from my seat and look around the train for likely English speakers.  Moving from my seat was actually somewhat of a relief.  I was sitting by a middle aged Chinese couple who insisted on putting their bare feet next to me on the seats.  And they didn't have pretty feet.  Standing in the aisle had its dangers, though, considering some dude was smoking a gigantic pipe next to the bathrooms (seriously, this thing was a chimney).  But I continued to look around for someone that might be able to help us.

It was getting close to midnight, I was tired, I was confused, and I was losing patience.  Finally I just belted out, "DOES ANYBODY SPEAK ENGLISH?"

I don't know who laughed harder: the ILP teachers, or the Chinese people on the train.  But it worked.  A guy behind me said, "I do," and before long he helped me figure out our tickets...sort of.  I figured we'd just show our tickets to a guard when we reached that stop and they'd point us in the right direction.
It all worked out in the end.  The guards had us get off the train, walk to our new cars, and re-board.  Most of the teachers were in the same car, but I was in my own, and Maddie was in her own.  Fortunately we spent most of the time sleeping, so it wasn't too lonely.

We arrived in Chengdu on a rainy afternoon and set out to find the bus to our hostel.  The instructions told us to get on bus 27 or 57 and to get off at the WouHouCi temple stop.  Sounds easy enough, right?  WRONG!  We got on bus 27 and realized rather rapidly that we would have no idea how to identify the right stop.  I asked a random guy on the bus where to get off.  He spoke enough English to let us know that we had 7 stops until we needed to get off.  7 stops later, we got off.

It was a rainy corner and nothing around us looked anything like a temple.  We decided to get back on the bus and try a few more stops down.  That ended up being a bad idea and we got off a few stops later to try and flag down a couple taxis. We got the first taxi with relative ease and sent four of the girls in that one with the hostel address and phone number (a couple guys nearby were nice enough to let the taxi driver borrow their phone so that he could call the hostel for directions).  Heather, Soren, and I waited behind for the next taxi.

Suddenly a bunch of people started to appear out of nowhere to steal our taxis.  It was still pouring and we were getting grumpy.  It seemed that every time we tried to flag down a taxi, someone else would sneak in and snag it.  Taking all of this into consideration, I feel no shame in in what happened next:  Soren and Heather were stationed up the street a ways and I was positioned by the corner.  After a few minutes a taxi started to pull up to drop people off.  I waved my arms in the air like a wild woman and managed to attract his attention.  He pulled up a few feet in front of me.  Then, some dude with a gigantic box in his arms made a bee-line straight for the taxi.  Soren hollered at me to get there before him, but I was already on top of it.  Just as the guy was reaching for the door handle, I braced my shoulder and aimed for the box.  You can imagine his surprise as a small white girl rammed into him to defend her taxi.  It was kind of awesome.  I felt a little bad afterwards, but seriously dude?  That was MY taxi.

When we all finally got to the hostel we were pretty pooped, so we set up our tour for the next day, ate dinner at the Café, and settled in for the night.  It was a cute hostel and we were all able to stay in the same room. 
The next day we went to see the Leshan Giant Buddha.  Never heard of it?  Neither had we, but it was amazing.  And there’s a cool story to go along with it: So the Buddha’s carved out of a cliff where the Minjiang, Dadu and Qingyi rivers meet. It was a really dangerous place for passing ships and resulted in many shipwrecks and deaths. In 713, a monk named Haitong started construction on the project in hopes that Buddha would bless the turbulent waters and make the passage safer for shipping vessels.  Funding for the project was cut and so Haitong gouged out his eyes to show people how serious he was about it.  Although it was a strange tactic, it worked and they commenced with construction.  But when Haitong died, all work on the Buddha stopped. It wasn’t until about 70 years later that the Buddha was finally completed.  The best part of the story is that the massive construction resulted in so much stone being removed from the cliff face and deposited into the river below that it altered the currents by the statue, making the waters safe for passing ships.  Praise to Buddha!  Awesome, right? To me, it shows just how much God loves his children, no matter who they worship. Just because Haitong wasn’t Christian, doesn’t mean he wasn’t inspired by God.

Getting into the spirit of things

A few of the Buddha

The Buddha from below

The ILP group and Buddha

We were able to set up a tour with the hostel to go see the Buddha, so we had our own private bus.  The Buddha was amazingly big and beautiful. There were many other Buddhas and writings carved into the walls. There were also many temples and towers to visit. Once we got our fill of hiking and taking pictures, we headed back to meet our bus driver.  He took us to a small restaurant for lunch and it had the best Kung Pow Chicken.  Seriously, I could’ve had 3 more plates of it.  On the ride back to Chengdu, the driver put Breaking Dawn: Part 2 in, so we watched and laughed as we drove back. 
That afternoon was spent at the WouHouCi temple and that night we went to the Opera!  Well…not a whole Opera…it was more of a variety show.  There was some Opera, slapstick, puppetry, hand shadows, clothes changing, and mask changing.  It was so cool!  And we got the same bus driver that took us to the Buddha, so we bonded with him a bit (he thought it was hilarious when Soren did aerobics with the Chinese ladies in the park).

At the WouHouCi Temple

At the Opera House with our bus driver

The next day was quite a debacle.  The plan was to go hike a mountain, but after losing our way, and getting on the wrong bus, and wandering around aimlessly, we decided to scrap it.  Instead, we visited a beautiful Tibetan shopping area for a while.  It was super cool, but we didn’t buy much there because it was expensive.  Soren and I broke off from everyone else for a while and found the main square of Chengdu.  It provided a beautiful view of the city and was just a nice place to be.  The square had two large fountains that were part of a bird’s eye view yin-yang.  But I have to say my favorite part of the square was the music.  I thought I recognized the first song from Kenny-G’s Christmas album, but since it wasn’t a very “Christmasy” song, I decided to let it slide. When the first song ended, the next one started up: “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire, Jack Frost nipping at your nose…”  Yup.  Definitely Kenny G’s Christmas album.  Well done, China.  Well done.

Brian! are you seeing this?? It's the Ocarina of time!

Soren in the square

Me and Mao

The Tibetan shopping area was a lot like Diagon Alley

That night the girls got massages and Soren and I went clubbing.  Oh yeah…clubbing in China.  Things were just opening when we arrived and we poked our heads into a few of the clubs: fancy, good music, lights, bar…but no dance floor.  We went there for the dancing!  One club had a pole, but I thought it unwise to let Soren near that because he probably would’ve discovered his inner pole dancer and given everyone a good show. We decided to wait an hour or so before actually staying in a club, so I got my nails done and Soren got a hair cut.  We ended up at “The New 88.”  I got Coconut Juice and Soren got a Sprite (livin’ on the edge).  Despite the lack of a dance floor, we found a little space to get our Night Club Two-Step on before we left.  Overall, it was just kind of fun to be there.

In the morning, we went to the Panda Reserve outside of Chengdu.  Now let me say something here: I’d never been a fan of Pandas.  I’d never seen what the big deal was.  They’re black and white bears…so what?  But seeing them so close up?  THEY ARE ADORABLE!  I’m obsessed with Pandas and I love them.  I want one.  In the next life, I will have a pet Giant Panda.  I will.  Mark my words.  

Soren and the Pandas

Isn't he so cute?

The rest of that day we wandered around Chengdu, looking for other things to do.  We found an awesome park full of tea houses where tons of people sat at tables playing Mah-jong.  There was also a small amusement park there where we did bumper cars, a carousel, and some kind of spinney ride.  It was a lovely time.

And that was pretty much it for Chengdu.  We had a 16 hour train ride back to Xi’an, where we spent a few more hours shopping, and then we had a 13 hour train ride back to Nanjing.  We were all very glad to be back home.  Travel is exhausting…plus all those hours standing and sitting caused my ankles to swell up to three times their normal size.  Yikes!

Saying goodbye to our hostel

Engrish Part 2

Nobody likes a sad booy

Not only do I "got milk," I'm now talking to it!

No caption needed

All aboard

Those railings need all the protection they can get

If you don't protect the railings, they turn into railigs

One step up from electric power

No...I will never forgive...well, maybe

Were they?

Alloneword

Make this picture big so that you can read all of them...they're awesome.

But non dangerous visitors are okay

This is my favorite.

Any guesses as to what this means?

I only slip carefully.

Xi'an

Chinese schools work a little differently than American schools.  When the schools here have holidays during the week, they have to make up for those missed days by having school on the weekends.  We worried that our 9 day vacation would be cut short.  Fortunately, ILP doesn't allow us to teach on Sundays, but the school insisted that we teach on at least one Saturday. So we did end up having one day less of vacation, but the school has been good to us, so we dealt with it.  Phoenix was a sweetheart and came to get the kids a little early so we could bolt to the train station.  We'd brought our luggage down to the classrooms so that we could leave straight from there because we were worried that we'd miss our train.  But our worrying was in vain, for soon we were on the train and on our way.

It wasn't the most comfortable traveling experience of our lives. 16 hours without personal space or a reclining chair isn't the best situation.  It was CROWDED.  When you take a long distance train in China, your ticket will be cheap or expensive based on what kind of experience you want.  For a cushy soft sleeper, you'll pay a lot of money.  Hard sleepers are also good, but can also be expensive.  Many trains have soft seats which is like a typical airplane seat, and most trains have hard seats.  Hard seats are super cheap, and not very comfortable.  The seats aren't actually "hard," they have cushions, but you don't have an individual seat and you have no leg room.  But it doesn't stop there.  You can also purchase "standing room only" tickets.  Those are exactly what they sound like.  People buy tickets to stand on a train for 16 hours.  A lot of them sit in empty seats until the seat owner shows up.  Many of them sit on suitcases.  So not only were the seats in our compartment completely full, but the aisle ways were as well.  Most of us were close to each other on the train, but poor Morgan was in a compartment all by herself.  Sleeping was difficult for all of us.  Soren and I took turns using each other as a pillow, but I slept better than he did.  He makes a better pillow for me than I do for him. 

This is when it started to clear out a little bit

Krista sat right by the bathroom where many of the standing ticketers hung out

Waiting for Morgan...and super tired

At last we arrived in Xi'an.  Exhausted and dirty, we grabbed some chicken at Dico's, bought our train tickets to Chengdu for later than week, and sought out the bus to the hostel.  We huffed and puffed up and down the main street there, blindly asking people where bus 603 stopped.  Half way up the street we realized that the bus stopped right in front of the train station and we'd just clunked around for the past 15 minutes for nothing.  Once we got to the right bus stop, we discovered that EVERYONE needs to take the 603.  We didn't get on the first bus, but we managed to elbow our way onto the second one. 

We found the hostel with relative ease.  I was super excited because it turned out to be right around the corner from the hostel I'd stayed in the last time I'd been in Xi'an!  When we entered the hostel, we could hardly stifle our excitement.  It had multiple levels with banisters and statues and lanterns, and other fun architectural aspects.  Soren and I stayed in a private room with our own bathroom (yay!)  The bathroom was funny, though, because the roof slanted down so that Soren had to duck his head.

Our private bathroom

This is right across from the reception desk

The hallway with hobbit arches

Our room was on the third floor

That first afternoon in Xi'an we went up and biked the city wall (we had sore backsides for the rest of the day...but it was so worth it).  It takes about an hour and a half to bike all the way around.  It's pretty bumpy, but it's a great way to spend an afternoon.  The courtyard just before going up onto the wall was fun because they had a little "changing of the guard" ceremony with some soldiers.  They also had drums you could bang on, and also random jump ropes, hula hoops, and hop scotches. It was a blast.

The Guards: awesome feathers!

Banging the drums

On top of the wall

On the bikes

Cheese!

That night we went and got dinner at the Muslim Quarter.  If you want fun food, spicy food, or strange food, this is the place.  A lot of it is street food (I loved the fried bananas).  Some of it is very unique.  There is also a lot of souvenir shopping to do there at great prices (when you barter, of course).

Foods

And Souvenirs

Our second day in Xi'an we went to see the Terra-Cotta Army.  I found it much more interesting this time because we had a tour guide who was able to tell us the history of the site.  So...for those of you that don't know:  around 230 BC, there was this guy called Qin Shi Huang and he was the King of the Chinese State of Qin.  He went to war with his army and conquered all of the other Chinese States.  This resulted in the unification of China in 221 BC...so he's a pretty important guy. He's the one that had the Great Wall of China built.  He also had the Terra-Cotta Warriors made.  The reason for the warriors was so that when he died, he would have an army in heaven.  He wanted to take over heaven...I wonder how that worked out for him. The construction of the warriors and his tomb took many years.  Emperor Qin died quite unexpectedly and was buried in his tomb.  Although he was a great and important man, he was cruel, harsh, and had made a lot of people unhappy.  A bunch of farmers stormed the Terra-Cotta Warriors and vandalized them (that's why so many of them are damaged or broken).  Fortunately, the Emperor's tomb was left untouched.  This is where the story gets good.  No one knew where the tomb was because everyone who worked on it was killed.  Archeologists today have found it, but it has yet to be opened.  They are afraid to open it because legend tells us that it's boobie trapped with cross bows set to kill anyone who attempts to enter it.  Where's Indiana Jones when you need him?  Fast forward to 1974.  A few farmers were out digging a well, but instead of getting water in their bucket, they got part of a Terra-Cotta soldier.  Since that day, more sights of the warriors have been uncovered and the work to restore them continues.  Pretty cool, huh?

Foot soldiers

Love the Terra Cotta horses

Behind us are a bunch of the restored warriors

Once we returned to our hostel, we decided we wanted to find a restaurant called "The First Noodle Under the Sun..." or something like that.  Jenna asked one of the men working at the hostel to give us directions.  He didn't know how to give us directions in English so he decided to take his break and lead us there.  Turns out, he didn't know where he was going and he took us to some other restaurant that we didn't want to eat at.  Still, he was a very sweet man, and we thanked him for his efforts.  We decided to get some more food at Muslim Quarter.

This is the best: French fries and popcorn on top of fresh juice

The next day the girls went to the Wild Goose Pagoda while Soren and I explored the streets of Xi'an and visited the Bell tower and the Drum tower.  Super cool and super fun.  After that, we found a 9 story shopping mall with an arcade on the top floor (I rocked DDR).  Next to the arcade was a ghetto haunted house.  I might have considered going in, except a girl came out sobbing.  Haunted houses...not my thing. We also ate at an incredibly crowded McDonald's.  I had to circle tables like a vulture in order to snag a seat.  Turns out, I'd make a pretty good vulture, because I found us a seat in less than 10 minutes.  In the afternoon, we all got together again and went to the Great Mosque of Xi'an.  It was a beautiful area, but I was so confused because I noticed that some of the people were praying to the west...then Soren reminded me...we're in China: Mecca is now to the west.  COOL!

I will thank you  (sign at the Bell Tower)

A view of the Bell Tower from the Drum Tower

At the Great Mosque

Two Dragons at the Mosque

And that was about it for Xi'an.  It's a beautiful city...one of my favorite places.  We bought tons of souvenirs, rode rickshaws, ate strange foods, and explored the history of China.  With our backs to Xi'an we began our journey to Chengdu. But that's another story....

Thoughts on China

Here are a few thoughts on China from myself and some of the teachers:

1. Crossing the street is a lot like playing Frogger

2. The world is your toilet

3. If you're not Asian, you WILL have your picture taken, or, foreigners are more interesting than historical monuments

4. Brooms are made of a bunch of sticks tied together and latched onto a pole (you'd think they wouldn't be very effective...and you'd be right)

5. Chinese people are very helpful with giving directions...but sometimes you end up in the wrong spot...or on the wrong bus

We love how different it is here and how funny some of the differences are!

Lovable Students

Although our ILP kids can be a pain in the neck, they are so gosh darn adorable.  And they're smart too.  Their English skills are coming right along.  Here are some of my favorite things they've said:

(When I came in to give Soren a band-aid) 
Student: Teacher Emily is a doctor!

(When entering a classroom)
Student: Hello boys and girls!

(When one of the teachers revealed a craft)
Henry: Teacher, so clever!

(On a very hot day, pantomiming a bow and arrow)
Sunny: Teacher, I want to shoot the sun.

That's all I can remember at the moment.  But don't worry, more of these posts will follow when I have more.