CHINA: Day 1

May 16/17 2012

Good news…..I’m in CHINA!! I’m still trying to wrap my mind around that whole thing. So crazy. It was an intense process getting here yesterday which makes being here even more exciting. All of our travelling went really well and we didn’t run into any problems; it was just a loooong day (or two days).

                At 2:30 in the morning we all squished into the SVU vans and headed up to DC. Then we hung around the DC airport until it was time to get on our 6 hour flight to San Francisco.  6 hours is a long time to sit on a plane friends.  When we got on the plane, I was thrilled to see that while a lot of my group was sitting together, I got a middle seat in between two people that I didn’t know. I don’t love middle seats too much. Especially when I don’t know either of the people I am sitting next to. I was less than excited. Luckily, Casey, a guy in our group, was in the middle seat a couple of rows back in between Kenzy and Melissa.  He was more than willing to switch seats with me. That was suuuper nice. We were super cramped and cozy the whole flight, but it wasn’t too terrible.

                Once we landed in San Fran, we walked straight to our gate and boarded our next plane…..the one taking us to CHINA!!! Once again I was in the middle seat in the middle of people I didn’t know.  And, once again, Casey switched with me so I could be in the middle of my friends rather than random people.  The plane was a pretty big one, but we were still really cramped.  Ever since signing up for this China trip, I had been dreading the plane ride.  I really hate sitting still for long periods of time….especially on planes.  But, between Kenzy letting me have her aisle seat, my iPhone, going to the bathroom a bunch of times (because I needed to stand up more than because I needed to go to the bathroom) and some Benadryl that knocked me out, I survived to hear those words over the intercom, “We are now beginning our initial descent into Beijing…..” 

                If we are being perfectly honest, I had a hard time being super excited and enthusiastic about being in China the moment we stepped off the plane.  Obviously I was soo excited and so happy to be off that plane, but I was a little tired and grumpy. It took us a while, but we finally made it through the airport and got on the little subway thing that took us from the airport to the real subway system.  The subway thing was pretty stressful for me.  I had two suitcases, a giant backpack, and my purse that I had to carry.  I was in flip flops and sweats and it was 90 degrees outside.  There were tons of people and to get up and down from the street to the subways you had to go up and down stairs (not escalators….don’t forget the luggage part).  Once we finally got to our subway stop, and dragged our suitcases up the stairs, we had a pretty good walk along the crowded, narrow sidewalk before we made it to our hostel.  Joe (the guy in charge) was walking super fast and I definitely struggled keeping up while my suitcases kept getting stuck and tipping over.  Let’s just say, by the time we made it to our hostel, it was probably best for no one to talk to me.  I was grumpy. 

                So that wasn’t the ideal way to start out this little adventure, but it gets better from there I promise.  Once I got a cold bottle of water, a shower, and some clean clothes, I felt much better.  Then I started being able to enjoy China.  Our hostel is in the middle of this long, super narrow street….kind of more like an alley if we are being honest.  The street is lined with little shops and restaurants, people’s houses, cars, bikes, fruit stands, and lots and lots of people.  It’s hard to describe and my pictures will do a better job, but at first glance this street is a really scary place.  Our first encounter with it was last night on our way to dinner.  It was dark and super dirty with all kinds of people sitting around cooking or smoking or just staring you down.  Also, people ride bikes and mopeds and sometimes squeeze their cars down this street and, when they do, it’s a really good idea to stay out of the way.  I hadn’t been outside for 5 minutes when I was almost run over by a moped.  They don’t look and they don’t stop, they just honk and hope you get out of the way.  Our little street really is the epitome of sketchy.  But somehow, it doesn’t scare me or make me nervous.  But we will talk more about that later.

                For our first Chinese meal, Joe took us to a more upscale (it’s all relative) restaurant down the street.  They seated us in a private banquet room around a huge round table with a big lazy susan in the middle.  Since none of us knew what we were doing, Joe mostly ordered for us. Usually Chinese meals are done as a group and you just order a bunch of food that everyone shares.  That was a relief to me last night since I didn’t have a clue what was on that menu (even with lots of pictures).  There was definitely a lot of weird stuff though.  We got tons of food brought out and I took a couple of bites of  everything (minus the raw seafood stuff that the boys ordered).  It wasn’t too bad.  Some was pretty good, some was pretty weird.  Joe tried to go pretty normal for the first night, so it will probably get a lot weirder in the next two weeks.

                After dinner we went back to the hostel and sat in the lobby and used the wifi for a while before heading up to our lovely little rooms.  Our beds are hard as rocks, we can’t even think about drinking the water, and the shower drains right onto the bathroom floor and makes a nice big puddle.  It’s a lovely place, but it definitely could be worse.  Luckily, we were completely exhausted so the hard bed thing didn’t phase us at all.