Wrapping It Up, Getting Home

I'll do this last post just to wrap up the end of my experience and put a close to this crazy time in the Orient. After graduation we basically had a day left in Harbin before we headed out to Beijing via train the next morning. After getting unnecessarily lost on the way to Pizza Hut (Robbie Smith was leading, what a terrible mistake) we had a fantastic time arguing with the Pizza Hut server about the size of the pizza and the price. They brought out the wrong size pizza, then said they'd add another small one and it would be fair--but it clearly wouldn't have been, so we refused. They were angry. We were angry. Then Kerri did the math on a napkin (I think she even used pi to estimate area or something...it was crazy) to prove they were wrong...they didn't really like that. Anyway, we ate our stupid pizza and paid the ridiculous bill. I was still hungry.

For the rest of the afternoon we just wandered around Harbin. I bought a suit jacket for my brother. When I re-met the group and tried it on to show them, some random lady came up, felt the fabric of the jacket, smiled real sketchy like, then walked off. I didn't even realize she was doing it at the time, but everyone told me two seconds after the fact. There was also one lady trying to sell something useless--I don't even remember what--and was saying, "One kuai, one kuai, one kuai, one kuai", repeating the price over and over again. So I walked over to her and said, "Excuse me, but how much is it?" At first she was confused, then she just smiled and said, "Crazy foreigner." We both laughed, it was pretty funny I guess.

So the next morning we set off toward Beijing in a nice sleeper train. Everyone just kind of hung out in the dining car, since we all seemed to have a couple Chinese strangers in our room who had annexed it for the night. It wasn't until my girlfriend started getting a bit upset over leaving Harbin that I realized I would probably never see these people again. Not just my classmates...some of then I would actually see...but our Chinese roommates. We had made friends with a lot of them. Actually, I made better friends with Yue Yang and Huang Lin than my roommate, and I still keep in touch with them. Since I do plan on going back to China, there's always a possibility of seeing them, but the chances are about as slim as China's population is large.

When we woke up--or rather for me, opened my eyes, since I can never sleep on those trains--we were in Beijing. After that train ride, and two-month semester, I felt kind of like the lady at the service desk of our hotel. Our one night stay at a western-style hotel included a western-style buffet. It was awesome; hit that up twice. We first set out to the dirt market--I guess kind of like a flea market (shown in the second pic). This one guy tried to sell me this ridiculous hat (first picture) and said I could look like an indian, like that is something I've always strove for. This guy was crazy. He even did the full expression, as you can see in the picture. We haggled for some art and random stuff that would later become souvenirs and Christmas gifts.

That night we went to Houhai Lake, which is the same place I ran around for days on end last summer. The night life there is really great, so we just kind of hung out for a while. When we decided that we weren't willing to pay the absurd prices to sit on one of the outside couches to have some beer (drinking inside is much cheaper, but that defeats the purpose) we just headed back to the hotel. It was past midnight anyway, and people had to get up for flights. Sometime between then and when we left for the airport the next day, I bought some corn flavored ice cream. I tried it just before Robbie, who is eating it like a cob in the fourth picture. To tell the truth, I probably could have finished it if I was really hungry...

Leaving the next day was kind of sad, but pretty exciting. I was ready to get back to overpriced burgers, democracy, personal transportation, the REAL football, and the fattest population in the world. Going to the airport I could already smell America. Lauren and Chelsea, from my class, were on the same flight, so we all split two cabs. Apparently these two girls knew the system. You just tell the Chinese service person that since we're tall Americans, we should get the emergency exit. It worked, and it was awesome. Chelsea just gave me a sleeping pill and I konked out for the 13 hour flight. I knew I was in America when I smelled the sweet clean air of Los Angeles (and yes, it was clean compared to China's air, I just didn't realize it until I had something to compare to).

I arrived back in Jacksonville at about 6:30 am. I had to be at the airport for my flight to Nashville at 1:00. Thus ensued a blitzkrieg of packing, but I was happy to be home, if only for about four hours.