The Pre-Trip to Xi'an and Luoyang

To make up for being home, my internet has crapped out, as has the person I’ve been borrowing from. Maybe this is because of wires. Maybe this is because of my shoddy router. I dunno. Drat. I’ll be updating and writing at the same time, so the first update tonight and then I’m going to bed. This is a long thing, so I’m splitting it up by days.

The trip started, I guess, with getting our tickets the day before- we went to the ticket place across the street. Ben was there, as was Xandra, a helper at the office. Tim, Tim, Adam, Will and I had gone to eat lunch- Tim and I had never met before, so it was kind of a feeling out sort of thing, like “what is this weekend going to be with you?” thing. On my end, at least, it was pretty cool. I looked forward to hanging out with them all.

Then we went to pick up tickets, We showed our passports, our confirmation number, got our seats- relatively close to each other, which was nice, but she said she couldn’t find one reservation. It turned out that it was due to handwriting comprehension, and soon we were given our tickets. It took far longer than the people behind us wanted or expected, I am sure. As we left we saw a protest hanging outside- a bunch of middle-aged people with a sign that said, “Henan University, Give Us Back Our Son”. Nobody had heard anything of a suicide (although, that’s not uncommon, we foreign teachers are rarely in the loop, it seems), but there were some girls talking in the ticket office. Apparently the son had been in the Physical Education major, and he had been running. And running. And just… stopped.

We had no idea, but we all agreed that foreigners next to protests are a good way to leave the country really quickly, so we avoided asking the parents and entered the university on the side (the protest was blocking the exit and a little of the entrance, so we went to the side of the banner and entered as quickly as possible). I do not know what happened to anyone.

Then we all had duck, by “we all” I mean Ben did not come, but Ann did, and Will did not. It was tasty duck, though. The head chef came out to meet us and talk to us- we were very exciting foreigners, it seems, and at least I’ve finally met the guy. He had met some impressive people, used to cook in Xi’an, it was exciting. I was glad to have Alexis there as a translator

Then we went to bed early, because there was packing to be done! We’d have to meet at 6:45 to make sure we arrived at the train station!