Christine and I were the first to arrive in Beijing at about
3 PM local time. Conveniently we happened to be on the same flight. After
getting strange looks for sleeping on the floor for four hours and finding out
that Jesse would arrive an hour later than expected, Christine and I decided to
find dinner. After grabbing some “Chinese fast food” we went back to our
meeting spot and Yijia and Jesse showed up within ten minutes.
By midnight everyone except Eric had landed. After waiting
in a very long taxi line we discovered that they would not take us to our
hotel. Although they claimed that they did not know the hotel, the real reason
for our rejection was that our hotel was too close for them to make good money
off of us. Nonetheless, we figured out that we could take a hotel shuttle from
the airport, so the girls got to the hotel around 2 AM. The boys waited a bit
longer for Eric. Since Eric and Yijia both speak Mandarin fluently, it worked
out perfectly. While we only got one hour of sleep, we all got to shower which
made going back to the hotel worthwhile.
We made it back to the airport without a problem. After an
uneventful flight to Changsha, we met up with Chen whose luggage magically
appeared on the same carousel as ours! We then took an hour bus ride to the
town’s bus station where we killed time by playing cards at McDonald’s. I guess
we weren’t ready for the Chinese experience yet – that was really the only
restaurant near the station, so we sadly ate there.
Our next bus ride didn’t have assigned seats so Nikki and I
grabbed the two in the very front row. The Hunan province is beautiful. About
halfway into our ride, we entered the mountains. The country side was very
lush. Everything was green and there was even occasionally some flowers along
the side of the road.
Interestingly, a lot of the road signs were in Chinese and
English. I noticed a few other interesting things about driving in China. Our
bus driver honked almost any time he passed anybody. I’m guessing he didn’t
trust anyone not to change lanes suddenly. Or no one uses their mirrors to
check behind them. I think that all drivers in china have very good awareness
of how large their car is. People tend to pass each other in very tight spaces,
like a small two lane road on the side of a cliff that also happens to be under
construction.
We arrived in Jishou and met the LAC volunteers easily.
Jesse handed his suitcase to some older woman to roll for him… Guys and girls
dorms are on opposite sides of the complex. We dropped off our stuff and had a
chance to change our clothes before heading off to dinner. The shuttled us in
cars to a local hotel that had a very nice dining room.
We sat at a huge circular table with the largest lazy Susan
that I’ve ever seen. There were some brief welcoming speeches in Chinese and
Keith spoke on our behalf. Then we ate some fantastic Chinese food. I did not
take up the offer for a fork and successfully used chopsticks for the entire
meal.
Then we returned to the dorms where I managed to fall asleep
before 9 PM. I woke up at 2 AM and was very confused for a second about why I
had perfect vision – my contacts were still in. Needless to say I and everyone
else were quite tired after two days of traveling (three days if you count the
fact that we lost a day flying to China. I am very excited to start
volunteering!
-Gina
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