First Day in the City

 
The day after we got to Linyi, jet-lag proved to have control over my life and I found myself completely awake and ready to go at five in the morning. I tossed and turned and tried to go back to sleep, but it was no use. After a while, i grudgingly gave up trying to go back to sleep and decided to go out for a walk. It was a chilly morning, and a light fog hung over the city (edit: since writing this I have discovered that no, it was in fact not fog, but smog. Yes the lovely layer of pollution that is ever hanging over the city. Please continue.) It didn't take me long to realize that although the dorms had some pretty major setbacks, the neighborhood around them was one of a kind. There are to small roads going in either direction right in front of my dorm and in between the roads is a small field with massive, oddly shaped boulders scattered throughout it. some of the stones have writing carved into them, while others set themselves apart by being shaped like a funny looking head or a small animal (please do keep in mind that these stones weren't actually carved into shapes, it was just kind of like finding pictures in the clouds.)

If you continued to walk down the road you will eventually come to a small forest and inside of it is a small, old temple with two little ponds on either side of it. The temple is unused and unkempt and the walls are covered in graffiti. To me it was lonely, and it was beautiful, and I loved it there. Every morning and afternoon after my discovery I found myself there, enjoying the silence and the beauty of everything around me. After I discovered the temple, I just sat for a while before I decided that it was time to keep exploring.

After walking for a while longer, I ended up leaving the main road to explore a pretty little side-street. Trees rose up on either sides of the road, making a perfect path for me to follow. After following it for a while, I discovered something quite unexpected. Not far from the main road is a massive basketball court with 15 or 20 poles placed here and there around the cement clearing. to the right side of the court is a baseball field with a running track around it, and on the far side of the clearing is what look to me like a very strange playground. "I wonder what that is?" I thought to myself as I strolled over to take a closer look. It didn't take long for me to realize that it wasn't a playground at all, but instead a fully functional workout center. The equipment is made in the same style as a playground in America and is painted bright colors of purple and green. Instead of using weights for the equipment, each machine functions by using your own body weight against you.

By the time I was done exploring, it was already past noon and I was getting extremely hungry. But before I could eat, there was one extra thing that needed to be taken care of. I went back to the dorms and found Kristel and together we went to Liz's room (the Chinese girl who is sorta in charge of the dorms.) Our request was simple, so no more than five minutes later, Liz led us out of the dorm and into the city, and then about thirty minutes after that Kristel and I each had our own Chinese phone (complete with lucky numbers!) Naturally we got the cheapest ones in the store, since we're only here for three months, and we also happened to choose the same color (which made it rather hard to tell which was which until a couple of weeks later when Kristel broke her screen while mountain climbing.) Now more than ever we felt ready to take on whatever China had in store for us (especially since we could text now instead of having to write notes to each other saying "going out for a stroll, if I'm not back in an hour I've probably died" and whatnot.)

We finished up our day by going to the mall near our dorms for a delicious meal and a bit of shopping. Little did we realize as we ended our first day, that pretty soon we would have a whole new set of problems awaiting us.

Cleanliness is Next to Godliness

 
 Getting into that Car with the man from the airport was probably one of the stupidest things I've ever done. Lukily for both Kristel and myself, the man turned out to be exactly what he said, and instead of ending up in some slave trade, we found ourselves in a 3 star hotel. It didn't take long to check in and find our way to the room, bt when we did, it wasn't exactly like what we were expecting. The beds weren't made, there was half eaten food sitting on the counters, not to mention the dirty towels scattered across the floor. It was a complete and utter mess. We marched ourselves back down stairs and (very politely) demanded another room. Or at least we would have, had we not encountered a slight problem. You see, it didn't take long for us to realize that the lady at the front desk knew hardly any English. We probably used just about every word in the English dictionary that somehow relates to the word 'dirty' but it was no use. We eventually convinced her to follow us upstairs but when we showed her the room she was still confused. We pointed to the half-eaten noodles and empty cans of beer and she then told us how much we would have to pay for them.
 

  Let me just say one thing right now...going to another country when you can't understand a word of said country's language can be extremely stressful for both yourself, and the natives. Well long story short, we eventually got her to understand the situation, worked everything out, and got ourselves into a new, cleanish room and were able to enjoy a nice, overdue sleep. Well, at least, I would say that if it were true, but in reality the hotel was so noisy that we hardly got any sleep at all. I'm not sure why the hotel felt the need to keep janitors working at all hours, and I'm not sure why the janitors felt the need to turn their walkie talkies up loud enough to wake us up every time something was said, but oh well. The next day we took the bus back to the airport, waited at a cafe for four more hours, and then finally boarded our plane, (not before having a few major issues with our tickets of course.) Kristel and I both slept through the flight and soon we were in Linyi.

 David, the head of foreign affairs at the university came to meet us at the airport. David informed us (as we rode across town in a fancy little bus) that we would be staying in the old dorms which meant that we would have to take a bus to class everyday instead of just being able to walk. The news itself was kind of disappointing, but not nearly as disappointing as our actual rooms would be. When we arrived, a young Chinese girl came to greet us and right off the bat turned to Kristel and asked, "Would you like the quiet room, or the room with sunlight?" "Uh...the room with light I guess..." she replied, somewhat bemused by the question. And so it was decided, Kristel would get the room with light, and I would get the quiet one. This was perfectly fine with me of course, that is, until I actually saw my room. Let me put this kindly. I'd rather stay in that dirty hotel room than in the one i found myself in. Everything was absolutely nasty. The floor was dirty with bits of glass here and there, the bathroom was revolting, and the once white sheets on my bed had turned a horrible shade of yellow. And to top it all off, some of my walls were starting to mold, which I'm pretty sure was bad for my health. Kristel and I were horrified by what we saw. After David and the Chinese girl Liz left, we had a long talk about our living situation. We came to the decision that there were only two options before us: either we needed to give those rooms a complete overhaul, or we needed to change dorms, and fast.

The Plot Thickens

   And so, with our plane leaving without us, and no way to phone home, Kristel and I had to figure out what to do by ourselves. Stuck in a massive airport on the other side of the world, with no one in sight who could speak English, needless to say, we were going to have a very hard time finding our way to Linyi. After we heard the news about our flight, we decided to go to a little cafe to get a long deserved bite to eat. As we ate, we went over all of our options. After a while, we managed to narrow it down to either getting on a train and finding our way to Linyi ourselves, or getting a hotel and waiting for the next flight which was at 8pm the next night. Sticking around for the next flight would me we would have to wait nearly 24 hours for the plane, so in the end, we decided that a ten hour train ride was the more preferable of the two options. Unfortunately for us, when we asked a worker who was selling train tickets in our terminal, we were informed that the next train to Linyi wouldn't leave until 8pm the next night, the exact same time as the plane. Suddenly when comparing a 10 hour train ride and a 1 hour flight, the train didn't seem like such a good option anymore. And so, with that, we decided that a hotel and then another plane ride would be the best thing to do.

   After our meal, we started to head downstairs to the hotel information desk, but we were stopped halfway by a man in a nice, blue suit who asked very nicely, (and in very broken English,) if we needed a hotel room. It seemed like perfect timing, so we told him about our situation and he immediately started blabbing away about his hotel. It seemed nice enough from the pamphlet he gave us and it even came with a free bus ride back to the airport. It sounded perfect! That is, until he started talking prices. 680 yuan for a double bed hotel room! That's over 100 US dollars! There was no way we could afford that, even split between us! We tried to tell him no, but he wouldn't leave us alone. "I'll give you a discount, 580 yuan for the room." Too high. "How is 480 yuan for the room?" Still too high. "Here is a good price, 380 yuan for the room." We talked about it for a minute. 380 yuan is a bit pricey, but at nearly half the cost, we figured it was probably worth it. Besides, we were way too exhausted to go through the trouble of finding something else.
 
   After we worked out the details, he rushed off to call the bus that would pick us up and take us to the hotel. He wasn't gone for long when he rushed back and led us outside. Around a corner, into a parking lot, and then over to a...car? "Where's the bus?" I asked, suddenly feeling very uncomfortable. "It cannot come, I will take you to the hotel myself." I couldn't help but notice that he was getting increasingly nervous and fidgety. He opened the trunk, grabbed our belongings, and unceremoniously tossed them inside. I looked over to Kristel to see if she felt as uncomfortable as I did, but she didn't seem very phased by our situation, and before I could say anything to her, she boldly stepped forward and climbed into the vehicle. At this point, I didn't see that I had any other choice but to follow. The first thought that came to my mind as the man drove was of course, "Are we going to be kidnapped?" The man drove horribly fast down the city streets. Swerving in and out of cars and honking at anyone in his way; I couldn't escape the horrible feeling that something bad was about to happen to us. I could tell that Kristel was starting to get worried as well, but there was nothing we could do now. The five minutes we were in his car seemed like an eternity, but soon they had passed and we found ourselves parked in front of an old, creaky building in the middle of Beijing.

Stuck in Beijing

 

At three in the morning on February the 26th, my adventure to China finally started. It was hard to say goodbye to everyone, but I would only be gone for three months, and this was going to be my adventure of a lifetime. My original flight plan was going to take Kristel (my companion from William Carey) and me from New Orleans, to Chicago, and then from there on to Beijing China. But of course, as luck would have it, our flight was cancelled, and we were rescheduled to take a few other flights. Our new plan would take us to Denver Colorado, and then to San Fransisco before we finally flew on to Beijing. Kristel I think was a little upset, especially since it would give us less time in each place to get to our next plane, but I was perfectly ok with the change of planes. After all, San Fransisco happens to be the home of my very favorite detective, Monk, as well as the future home of Starfleet headquarters. And yes, I do realize that I'm so horribly nerdy, but that doesn't matter, what does matter is the fact that the new schedule pushed up our flight to Beijing by several hours, so that meant our layover from Beijing to Linyi would only be one hour. I was excited at first since we wouldn't have to wait as long for our last flight, but little did I know how much trouble a one hour layover at an international airport could be.

   Our flights to Colorado and California went by without much excitement, and soon were were on our half a day flight to Beijing. Let me tell you, that was the most awesome plane I've ever been on. Each seat had a pillow, a blanket, and a little tv with several new American movies. Kristel and I sat on different rows so I ended up next to a young Chinese guy. He seemed to be about my age, but he was already working on getting his PhD, (unlike myself with my measly two years of college under my belt.) His English was pretty good, so we had a pretty long chat before the plane took off. He asked me where we were going, but when I told him the name of the town, he looked completely lost. After several more attempts, I finally had to spell it out, and he said, "Ah, Linyi!" And I said, "Yea, that's what I said!" He then took the liberty of informing me that my pronunciation was terribly wrong. Let's just say, I still have a long way to go on my journey to learn Chinese. On our way to China we flew over parts of Canada, Alaska, and Russia. Looking down and seeing the beautiful landscape made me want to jump right out of the plane and go explore it all.
 
   Madness ensued when we finally landed in Beijing. Our next flight started boarding at 8 P.M. an we didn't land until 7:15! We got through immigration easily enough, and it wasn't hard to find our bags, but after that we were at a completely loss at what to do next! There weren't many people who knew English, so it took us a long time to find someone who could give us directions. Time was quickly ticking away and we weren't even in the right terminal! It was 8:00 when we finally figured out which terminal we were supposed to go to, and to make things worse, we had to endure a 20 minute bus ride across town just to get there. It was a long time after boarding when we finally found our way to the check-in desk, and the plane was very nearly ready to depart. "Maybe we can still make it onto the plane!" Kristel said, optimistically. But when it was finally our turn to talk to the receptionist and ask if there was any way we could still get on, she looked at us and said those few words that no traveler wants to hear, "You're too late." And so, with that, we found ourselves stuck in Beijing.