Overwhelming Euphoria and Daftly Quivering: Travel to Linchuan

Picture this: It's time to leave Hong Kong and travel to your school in Linchuan. Here is the plan: First you'll put your luggage in the trunk of a taxi but it won't fit. So, you must strap it to the trunk with one rope. Now get into the taxi and hope that it doesn't fall out while you're on your way to the train station. When you get to the train station, nobody will speak English so just jump in a random line and hope it's right. Now that you're in line, nature calls. Leave your stuff with the rest of your group while you run to the "bathroom." When you get into the bathroom, you realize that there are no toilets. You must squat over a hole in the ground and I hope you have good aim. After you've "finished," run back to your line just in time to go through security. Now that you're in the terminal, you don't know which train is yours, so just sit down on a random bench. A crazy Australian man will come up and start talking to you like you are his best friend. Watch out because this will continue for the rest of the trip. When someone says something over the intercom, everyone will start to move so you must move now too. As you rush with the crowd, luckily they will take your ticket and show you to your train. The train ride is pleasant for the most part. The crazy Australian man will keep coming back and talking to your group, but you won't mind because he is actually quite entertaining. After you hear about all of the beer he's had lately, you introduce him to Brian Regan. He laughs for about 5 minutes straight and then proceeds to tell you how corrupt your government is. You will finally agree so that the crazy man will leave you alone. After that, you will get off the train and meet your native coordinator, Tim.

Enjoy your trip! Oh yeah, and this really happened to me.

After we met Tim, we waited for an hour for a bus to come and pick up our stuff. Little did we know that after they took our stuff, it would take us another hour to walk to the subway, ride the subway, and then walk an eternity to our hotel all while we were dragging the remainder of our belongings.

Chillin waiting for the bus to come get all of our stuff.

I just went swimming!...oh wait, that's sweat.

Tim took us to a "really nice hotel." This is our ENTIRE room for the 4 girls. There were two queen beds so we slept in twos. We had enough floor space to put our carry-ons and our backpacks and then there was no room to walk.

This was our toilet/shower for the night. They were also nice enough to give us a half of a roll of toilet paper.

After we checked into our hotel, Tim took us to dinner. Dinner: Chicken soup which contained the entire chicken including the feet, bone, etc., pig intestines, fried rice, spinach cooked in oil, pork that was so spicy that it burned my ears, Coke, chicken with too many bones to get any meat, boiled water.

About half-way through the meal, Nathan asked Tim when the restaurant was closing because everyone was leaving. Tim said, "when I finish the beer!" At this point, he had already had a few glasses and he still had 1 1/2 bottles to go! So, we all sat there and watched him drink for about 30 minutes.

Jbiggs and Josh enjoying their meal and getting burned from the spicy meats.

Angela and Natalie eating.

Me eating and drinking enough Coke to kill a horse.

For breakfast, Tim bought us some dumplings on the street in front of our hotel. I'm usually not a fan of dumplings, but I was so desperate that I ate them anyway.

People just randomly hand you their children. This little boy was so cute! Every time I don't like China, I think about how cute the kids are and I feel a lot better!

When it was time to go to Linchuan, we got to ride on a sleeper train. This is me on my top bunk. This is before I knew that the night would be sleepless and filled with cigarette smoke.

We had about 3 feet of space to work with.

Attempted capture of how tall the bunk beds were. They were three beds high and I was on the top bunk. I felt like a monkey trying to climb to the top.

I made it. Happy face!

Cute little boy (Li Lu) and girl (Fu yi) that kept us entertained for about 5 hours...literally. They were shy at first but then they were climbing all over our beds and teaching us Chinese. It was so fun!