i guess i'll start with the pandas

Wow.. it's been a month since I've updated. I don't know where to begin, but I can't put this off anymore or the blog is done. So here goes..

National Week Vacation!
October 1st was China's 62nd birthday, and China celebrates this event annually with a week holiday.

So Fri, Nov 30th, after an hour long train ride with Jesse from Baoding, we grabbed lunch near my hostel. He then headed to his hostel to meet up with some other CIEE-ers, and I headed to mine for wait for mom. Once she checked into the hostel (Sanlitun Youth Hostel aka Wangfujing hostel aka Beijing Sanlitun Hostel), I immediately started unpacking all the goodies she brought. It was like Christmas, not gonna lie, althought probably better since I won't see any family on Christmas this year. Reece's peanut butter cups, candy corn, halloween socks (thanks Martha!), current American magazines (Martha again!), kids books and materials for my classes, and so much more. That was great.

Then it was off to Blue Frog for some amazing American burgers (I hadn't had American food since I got here other than McDonalds once, but I'm sure mom was less than thrilled since she hadn't even had a Chinese meal yet) and to celebrate the births of China and Steve, another CIEE-er placed in Changping. We (Changping crowd: Steve, Mar, Kelly, Emma, Joel and then a couple others including John in Anhui, and Chris somewhere in Hebei, Jesse, Mom and me) had a couple beers, and then the group moved on to a bar. Once again, I managed to catch a cold right before getting to Beijing, so I headed back to the hostel with mom and turned in.

Sat we got up early and decided to be real Beijingers and take the subway to the train station to buy tickets to Baoding for after Chengdu. Note: the Beijing subway is amazing! Clean, fast, efficient, reliable, and easy. I love it! So we get there no problem, and then are faced with mobs of people trying to work out their transportation needs. You can't do anything in China without mobs of people. We succeed after some garbled Chinese from me and a lot of confused "what the hell does this dumb foreigner want" looks. So we looked at a map and decided since we were near the middle of the city, why not check out Tiananmen on this auspicious occasion. BAD IDEA! After a walk substantially longer than the map led us to believe, we found it was an absolute mad house. The line into the forbidden city probably contained the population of Stephenville and College Station combined. So we wandered around, had our pictures taken by countless strangers with and without our permission and moved on. Or tried to. Crowd control wasn't so effective, and we were exhausted and sick of the crowds and the noise and the chaos, but luckily after some navigating we got to a subway station. Unluckily it was closed. I learned later that this was because all subway stations are closed near tiananmen on major days like that. So we tried to get a cab. That was a no go. The few empty, on-duty ones we saw wouldn't pick us up (racism is alive and well), so we walked. And then walked. And then finally got a cab and somehow directed the cabbie where to take us.

After a little relaxing we walked over to YaShow, this giant clothes market. You can bargain for anything there, and we did. Got some sweet fake purses, fake Columbia jacket, and a some other little things. Spent way too much time and money (although spending too much Chinese money, when you look at it back in dollars, doesn't really seem like spending all that much anymore).

Back to the hostel to drop off our haul, and then it was dinner time. We walked to a pizza place to meet up with the crew. They had been there close to an hour, had only just been seated, and hadn't successfully placed an order yet. Once we got there, luckily things had started happening, and we got some delicious pizza pretty quick. After dinner we decided to head to the club (VICS) next door. The cover charge was 50 cny (8 USD), which was steep, but they lured us in with the promise of a free drink ticket with the cover. That was a lie. We weren't thrilled, but no refunds were forthcoming.

Sunday
Woke up and grabbed a cab to the airport, it was time for Chengdu! The airport, like the metro, is also clean and efficient and easy, so there were no difficulties. I did forget about the water bottle in my backpack at security, but they just made me take a sip of it and I was through.

We arrived in Chengdu (Sichuan province) and the adventure began. The cabbies at the taxi stand refused to turn on the meter, and refused to accept anything less than 150 cny for what we believed was only a 10 mile, maybe 20 min drive. So we got a black cab (just a guy and a car) for 100 and got to the Sheraton in about 30 min (I booked the hostel, but mom splurged for the Sheraton.. woohoo!). It was around 330 but our rooms weren't ready. We decided to splurge again and pay hotel prices for a snack and a drink. When we got the rooms and I sank into one of those heavenly beds, I knew instantly the rest of my time in Baoding just got harder. I had gotten so used to the hard as rock bed I have here, it didn't even bother me. Now it sure does. But anyway, we checked in and then headed out to see what we could find nearby.

skulls of something on the snack
street

Chengdu, and Sichuan in general has a ton of these neat little traditional snack streets, kind of similar to Wangfujing in Beijing, but not quite as huge and extravagant. We found one of those, walked around, people watched, and had a beer at a little patio restaurant, where people watched us.

Monday -- PANDA DAY
Got up at the butt crack of dawn (this is my life now, I can't sleep past 7.. what has happened to me??) and took a cab to the Xiongmao Jidi -- or the Giant Panda Research and Breeding Base. It was awesome. I hugged a panda bear. And saw a lot of other panda bears. And learned a lot about panda bears (xiongmao = panda bear). There was also a lot of walking, and we saw some red pandas. Red pandas are more like raccoons than pandas, and are also called "lesser pandas". A little insulting I think, they're very cute. It was raining a little, so I think the place was a little less crowded than it normally would have been on such a huge holiday. The mobs were beginning to arrive as we left.

adorable babies! i wish i had a better pic but we had about
30 seconds to snap a pic without flash from behind a glass
window before the guards were like "move along"

We shared our cab with a nice French couple back to the city center (a little ways away), then it was back out on another adventure.

This time we decided to walk a different direction, towards a canal that goes through the city, and a famous Daoist temple. Once again, the maps were very misleading, being that they were neither to scale nor oriented North (also no compass rose -- wtf people?). So we walked. and walked. and walked. saw some interesting sights. heard some interesting sounds. In fact, we did find a couple city parks and walked through them expecting peace and quiet, maybe some serene tai chi practitioners, but no. It was chaos! Of the deafening, cacophony of sound variety. Every little corner had their own blasting boom box and screaming and yelling and argh! It was enough to drive you crazy.

Then there was more walking and we found Yongqinggong -- a really famous Daoist temple. It was massive. Like acres big. With tons of little temples and incense and statues of daosit deities and lots more walking. We explored and saw as much as we could and then, to my great relief grabbed a cab back to the hotel.

Tuesday
American breakfast in the hotel -- eggs benedict! Yum! Then it was to the bus station for another adventure involving mobs of people, noise, lines, and various modes of transportation.
We got a ticket to Emei (city where Mt. Emei, a sacred Buddhist mountain is located), got on the bus and a few hours later were in Emei city.
Then we taxied to a different bus station, then bused up the mountain where we were told to switch buses to go further up. Got on the next bus, and discovered very quickly it wasn't going further up, it was going back down. That sucked. So we got a black cab up the mountain to our starting point, took a cable car up a little more, and actually got on the trail only shortly before sunset.

We briefly checked out Wannian temple, and with the sun rapidly disappearing, we were approached by multiple people trying to offer "hotel" rooms. We went ahead and agreed to see the room, and were led off the main path, down some stairs, around and into a little building with a kitchen, a living room, and four or so rooms. The room had two beds, the sheets seemed clean-ish, the price was right, and they had beer so we accepted. They offered to cook us dinner, but the thought of being closed in our rooms at 6pm after the somewhat hellish day we had endured was not so appealing. So we went back up to the trail with our phone flashlights leading the way (thank god "there's an app for that") and wandered towards the area we thought we had seen some restaraunty places (this wasn't still in a touristy, populous part of the trail, so there were a few). We started walking in one direction, passed a couple walking the other when we heard English! English! I blurted out "where are you from?" and discovered they were a sweet couple from Singapore, who were staying at a hotel a little ways down the other way. They said there were a few non-vegetarian restaurants that a way, so we turned around and followed them. I'm thrilled we did, we sat and had a beer and a good conversation with them. The way we were originally heading only had vegetarian restaurants, like much of the mountain because of the whole Buddhism thing. Then we didn't want to impose so we left them and got some fried rice and kung pao chicken nearby.

pay no attention to my double chin

Wed -- More Emei Shan and LeShan big Buddha!
Spent the day walking down stairs. Up some too, but mostly down. Good thing we got dropped off decently high so we didn't have to hike up them. Most of the trail is just stairs.
It was a beautiful day, lovely scenery. Saw some crazy monkeys, and even more signs warning us in chinglish about the monkeys. They are very clearly trained by the vendors to harass you unless you buy their "monkey food" and walking sticks.

After we had our fill we walked to a bus station at the bottom and took a bus into the city. We were going to buy a ticket to Leshan to see the biggest Buddha in the world, but were quickly approached by black cab drivers and instead agreed on a super cheap price to be dropped off right at the Buddha (about 30 min to an hour depending on traffic). Way more efficient than bussing to Leshan, and then taxiing to the buddha, and cheaper too. So we follow her to her car, which turns out to be a van with 6 chinese tourists who look about my age already crammed in. She stuffs us and our bags in the bag and we take off.

We get to the big buddha, buy tickets and head in. Once again, mobs and mobs of people. We walk around, have some super expensive tea, and realize that to actually walk down the stairs from the Buddha's head to his feet involves waiting in a 5 hour line. So we veto that. We see the giant head, and then decide to walk over to where we can get a boat ride to see the full Buddha from the water. Then its time to try and find our way back to Chengdu, which means getting back to the bus station. The thought of hours and hours more lines, crowds, buses and taxis kind of terrifies me. Instead we head over to a tour guide booth thing and ask if

any of them speak English. No response, nobody looks at us. Protip: This doesn't mean they don't care/don't want to help! Although it seems they are ignoring us and continuing their conversation, they are actually frantically trying to find their colleague with the best English. She appears and asks us how she can help. We inquire about finding a driver to just take us straight to Chengdu (about a 2 to 3 hour drive). After some negotiation, and calling a friend who calls a friend who calls a friend, we have us a driver. We grab some noodles while we wait for him to arrive, and thank our kind middle man. The guy arrives and she tells us to write down his license plate number if we're worried. She then also tries her best to explain that he needs to fill up with gas before leaving, so we will have to get out of the car and wait a little ways away while he does this. She does a good job, but we were a little confused.
 Everything worked out though, we got to Chengdu, got back to our room, got in bed, and ordered room service.

cutest baby ever. love the traditional hair cut

And that is more than enough for today. Tune in next time (hopefully less than a month from now) to hear the rest of my adventures from holiday, and getting back in to the swing of it in good ole Baoding.