Nicole is in China! Day One and Two

Day One: 

Woke up at 6 to try and finish cleaning for Nicole in my room. At 7, woke up the old man to get in the hired car to drive to the aiport. I managed to say what I needed this time, compared to when Mom came. "My younger sister comes to Kaifeng". While Nicole isn't my younger sister, I was afraid if there was no blood connection I would not have a free hired car. It's a great service. 

Nicole's plane was about 10 minutes late, but no worries! She arrived with her token blue roller bag and we drove back to Kaifeng- not on the highway but past all of the small dilapidated buildings outside of the city. We got back, entered the hotel and my room- where I promptly napped. I was tired. Afterwards, we had lunch at the Jaozi place, a very tasty first, bought bus tickets to the airport, and Nicole napped afterwards. Then dinnertime was with the exchange students Ben and Dennysha and the Oya English teacher Tom (who is not part of my program, but here the same amount of time nonetheless). It was a good dinner as well; we went to the Muslim Place, which is a noodle store and the most delicious store. 

Then on our way out the exchange students were going to hang with us, but I said no drinking as I didn't want to have to clean up at 5:30am in the morning. They moved on to Tom's place. We went to bed at 8:30ish. 

Day Two: 

I woke up at 5:30. We'd had no luck the previous day in securing a faster method to the bus station- the buses would run at 6:30 and the taxis demanded 4x the money on the night before, so we'd have to walk 40 minutes to get to the bus arrival on time. At six we woke up the old man in our hotel (but our hotel is supposed to open at 6, anyway, otherwise I would have woken him up earlier), I withdrew some cash and then we hoofed it to the bus station. We were there early (better than late) and then we got on the bus, transferred to another bus, and made our way to the airport. In the airport (we were there 2 hours and 15 minutes early), we managed to find a self check-in service (many people wanted the tickets or to talk to a person), and got on the plane. They served a meal for the two-hour flight. 

Ann was waiting for us in the airport! We made it to our hostel, did nothing, and then went to eat Indian food. I have missed being in a big city. I have missed other foods. 

After we walked around a bit, we went back to our hostel and went to bed. :)