January 15th: It’s not every day that a day like
today happens.
Things happen and you get to the end of the day and you can
do nothing but sigh and chuckle to yourself and say “wow, that happened today?.” But I’m getting a little ahead
of myself, where to even begin?
If you recall from the previous posting, my allergies
decided to throw a party basically everywhere in my body from my waist up.
Well, my lungs didn’t like that so they started this violent coughing form of
attack which is not the most convenient thing ever. Don’t get me wrong, I’m
really proud of my lungs, they’ve done good to me and we’ve kinda grown up
together, it’s just really inconvenient that they’re this violent when I share
a bedroom with four other sleeping women.
At approximately 2:15am the forces were on the move. I
thought for sure we could fight a “quiet battle” of sorts (you know, like “the
quiet game” that mommy’s always tell their kids to play to secretly shut them
up for about 2 minutes? I tried it with my lungs. Fail.) At about 2:30 am I
climbed down from my bunk, popped a couple of cough drops in my mouth, grabbed
a water bottle and my Kindle and headed to the hostel lobby…no one was sleeping
down there so there was little fear that I would wake anyone up. The battle for
my air supply raged for quite some time, but at about 3:30am the allergens
temporarily retreated, and I braved climbing up my bunk again and closing my
eyes for just a few moments of…
 |
| Team Harbin @ 6am, Xi'an Airport |
…before I knew it, the alarms were going off. Was it really
4:30 already? We had a plane to catch.
We bundled up our belongings and lugged them down to that lobby I had left
merely an hour ago. Laura talked to the front desk man to finish out the paper
work and confirm our transportation to the airport.
“the van is not
coming”, said Mr. Front-Desk-Guy
“What do you mean it’s not coming?” said Laura [she hadn’t
had her coffee yet]
“it is too early”,
said he.
“We were told to be ready by 5am,” said Laura.
Phone calls were made, and a van was present to pick us up
at the hostel by 5:30am
Plane was fine, food was…questionable.
We stepped out of the airport in Guangzhou. Everything about this place
screams that it’s certainly tropical…at
another time of the year. The lush palm trees and tropical looking remnants
of flowers convey that for a large portion of the year, the weather here seems
to be hot & humid. However, the current month is January and being that we
are in the Northern Hemisphere {still}, that means that there is no “hot &
humid” to be found here. We’re currently in the “cold & wet” season, and Guangzhou doesn’t
disappoint. It’s been raining for continuous hours now and at fairly heavy and
steady pace (but trust me, im super thankful it’s not snow). The hotel told us
to hop on airport shuttle 6. That’s all that it said so that’s what we did.. And
then we got off when the bus stopped, assuming that the next step would be
obvious.
It wasn’t.
If you’re a Chinese citizen, it’s not every day that you get
to see a white person, let alone 6 white people, let alone 6 white people with
backpacks and suitcases, walking in the rain and crossing major highways [don't worry mom, we looked both ways]. We were
quite the sight for a few Guangzhou
citizens today. Our airport shuttle bus decided to drop us off outside of a
shopping center.Our hotel was nowhere in sight, so we began wandering. We
came across a Starbucks. Laura had her coffee, and Michael was unsuccessful in
obtaining the “free wi-fi”. We hailed down a couple taxi’s and showed them the
address of our hotel, none would take us. We laughed and sighed, everyone
externally exhausted and trying to keep spirits light. With every new and
failing step of our adventure we’d just remind ourselves ”this is going to make a great blog post”. We told ourselves that
for the hour that we wandered the streets of Guangzhou in the rain, with our wet bags and
weak [and really hungry] bodies.
If Starbucks has an “Employee of the Year” award, it needs
to go to one of their employees in Guangzhou.
We were poor, lost, wet, and weary Americans who just wanted our hotel. Our new
Starbucks employee-friend walked us out in the rain to hail taxi’s for us to
explain the location of our hotel [as apparently the address on the website was
faulty].
Yet again, we are less than a block away from McDonald’s,
which means any slightest accomplishment/bad day/reason to celebrate is a
reason to purchase a McFlurry {Yes, there are McDonald’s in Harbin, but the
nearest one to our school is about 25 minutes away by bus}. Today we celebrated
getting to a new city
as we all indulged in our hot fudge sundaes and McFlurries…and a McChicken
sandwich for Wes.
We celebrated (again) and shared some fellowship time with a
friend of Lauren’s, an Auburn Alum, who is currently working and residing in
this city. We went out for what has been one of the greatest meals in our time
here in China…
Mexican!!!
We celebrated at “Tekilas”, and *sigh* it was just great. Tacos, chips and dip,
tacos, fajitas, salsa, tacos… a good life.
It’s not every day that all
that happens. With my hair now freshly shampooed and jammies on snug, I just
thought I’d verbally process this…experience…and give you a glimpse into the
adventure we had!
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