the never ending saga of national week

Ok lets see I left off in Chengdu.
Thursday morning I said goodbye to the amazing bed and mom and I cabbed to the airport. Made it back to Beijing no problem, and then found a bus to take us to Beijing West train station (opposite side of the city) to continue on to Baoding. Also no problem. Got dropped off about a 15 min walk from the station, where a crowd of rickshaw drivers were waiting. Before I could say a word they had grabbed our bags and told us they were taking us to the station. We went with it.

We arrived at my school a couple hours later, introduced Mom to the gate guards, made sure everyone had signed off on her being there and we were all set. 

I worked Friday and Saturday, and Mom entertained herself on our thrilling campus. We had a few excursions into town on bikes to eat at local restaurants and see the supermarket, etc. It was a quick trip, however, and Saturday night we got back on the train once more headed for Beijing. We went straight to the hotel near the airport and once again ordered room service and called it a night. 

Sunday morning Mom took off (bummer) and I turned back around and went back to the train station, back to Baoding, back to my school. This short Beijing excursion (about 16 hours all told) resulted much later in a trip to the police station to have some fingerprinting and wrist-slapping done, but that's a story for another day. 

So Mom had left, and I was back in my room, back on my rock hard bed, and back to work.