(Part one and two were written together, but are too long to post together. Here is the link for part one.)
The train seats weren’t half bad. I played a few games with the students beside me (the games “What am I?” and “Bullshit”), read Foundation by Isacc Asimov, journaled, didn’t sleep, and visited a friend for two hours in another car. My friend was talking to a 13 year old Chinese girl, and occasionally her father would pipe in (her other relatives were there but silent and smiling). There was no seat for me so I stood up the whole time, but it was very interesting to listen in on the conversation.
I realized quickly that no one in China speaks the textbook language that I learned in class; so to understand anything I’m just going to have to study conversational Chinese separately (talking to locals as much as I can). The girl was very cute and asked to take a picture of me (not my two other friends) because I’m…you guessed it!…white. She lives in Sichuan and said that there are barely any foreigners there. Like most of China.
After the long conversation with the girl and my friends, I felt especially drained. Luckily by that time it was time to disembark the train and go to the hotel. Our hotel room is fairly nice, but the downstairs lobby, elevator, and stairwell are crappy.
Yes, literally crappy. Apparently someone pooped all over the stairwell, because three girls who went up quickly came down to wait for the extra slow elevator. They said the pooping looked fairly deliberate. I talked with another girl who found out from some locals that we are in the bad side of town, people get wasted, and even the locals who talked to this girl were shifty creatures of their own. But then my room was nice, the shower had a divider from the toilet unlike other hotels, and all of the maids say “nihao” to me as I pass by (Hello in Chinese) so I’m left without a clue on how to feel about this hotel. Strange China…
Today I woke up, ate some leftover bakery goods in my friends’ room, and we all headed to the Gansu Provincial Museum in Lanzhou. We learned more about the Silk Road from that museum, and also got to see some dinosaurs too. It was a quick morning.
We came back to the hotel and I went to lunch in a group of six for Lanzhou’s famous 牛肉面aka beef noodles. Unfortunately we forgot to ask for them “bula” so they came spicy and hot. My tongue was burning throughout the meal and I was left with a tingling sensation for a good half hour after that. We found an ice cream place right next to the hotel though, and I don’t think anything has ever felt better in the history of the world than ice cream after a spicy meal.
This afternoon, five of us went to see if we could grab a goatskin raft and float on the Yellow River. After we arrived though, the goatskin raft looked very unstable, while the speedboats looked much safer. We were able to haggle down to 50 kuai per person for a 20 minute ride, which I’m sure is a rip off, but it’s still only less than 10 dollars a person (I love China). The boat driver liked to go very fast over the waves, and all the girls screamed every time the boat smacked down on the water.
Now I’m back at the hotel, writing this. I have Ethernet here for the first time, which is so incredibly exciting—you have no idea. I was completely unaware that an earthquake happened in DC until just now. If anything interesting happens in the news, email me? Otherwise it’s like I’m in a black abyss of ignorance.
Until tomorrow my friends…
