Long Vacation: Day 10

The long vacation was a big party but it was just that—long. Go figure. Enjoyable but very tiring to be running to and fro from pavilion to pavilion without a lot of time to recuperate. So it's a little bit of an understatement to say that I was excited for it to be over :)

For breakfast we ate off the street. And by that I do not mean that we literally picked food up off of the roads in Xi’an and put it in our mouths. I hardly like letting my shoes touch the roads here, what were you thinking?? It’s just the term we use to refer to trying food from street-side little vendors. Always cheap and always an adventure. Today was a Chinese hamburger..and let’s just say that the Chinese should leave hamburgers to America ;)

We came back to the hostel and Tiffany told us to have our luggage down to the lobby in an hour. My sunglasses had broken in my backpack so we proceeded to spend the good part of that time doing the following...


We got laughing so hard, oh my goodness it was hilarious! Totally beat packing!


Anna had to give it a try


followed shortly by Debbie


It is actually a lot harder than it looks, I promise. And the facial expressions are totally necessary to get them to stay like that! No joke! We sometimes wonder about our sanity here..


Ahem, anyway, packing..we said goodbye to our friends at the hostel and loaded a bus to the airport! I was a little anxious about flying on a Chinese airline but the airport looked normal enough so that was a good sign. We checked our luggage and waited for our flight, which of course was delayed.

Resume taking funny pictures with sunglass lenses!


Erin’s turn


Joey..haha


Amanda’s is one of the best, I think!

Sometimes it pays to be so easily entertained :) We boarded the plane and we were on our way. I ended up sitting by one of the guys in our group, Ryan, who got his mission call to Taiwan while he was here! *Yay* I informed him of this tendency I have on planes to get motion sickness which sometimes has very negative, and often visible, side effects. I expected him to be understanding but he wasn’t, he was NOT OKAY with the situation and was convinced that I was NOT going to throw up on this flight. Ryan’s a big guy so I was a little surprised that he was so squeamish but oh well, if I couldn’t help it, I couldn’t help it! The flight started out well, nothing too exciting and I was just concentrating with all my might to relax and not let the normal little bumps get to me, because the landings are what make me sick so if I stayed as un-sick as possible until then it would be good, right? I read a little and about..20 minutes before landing I got up to use the bathroom, even though the seat belt sign was on. I knew I had to hold my composure during the landing and having to pee wasn’t a distraction I wanted to deal with. I waiting in line (so awkward on planes..) and used the teeny bathroom and started back to my seat. About halfway there the plane hit a huge patch of turbulence and the whole plane jolted in a downwards direction, making everyone scream and drop a couple of feet. For me out of my seat it was like I walked down a step, it was so scary! I grabbed onto the nearest seat and seriously scrambled to my row, pushily telling Ryan to let me past because if this plane was going down I sure as heck wanted to be in my seat for it! After I had my seatbelt safely on I looked around and saw that one of the Chinese guys across the aisle had been holding his green tea up and when we hit the turbulence it was been thrown at the ceiling and was now dripping over everyone. Hahaha it was so great, a nice little comic relief to a seriously scary situation. I was out of my seat for all of that! I thought of Lost and Charlie in the bathroom when the plane went down..I always think of Lost when I get on a plane..

Then I remembered the lady waiting to use the bathroom after me..and felt sincerely sorry about however that experience went for her. Yikes..

Landing. Ryan was SO determined to distract me to the extent of not vomiting and was just asking me pointless questions that I don’t even remember giving him answers to but it worked, and to both of our relief (mostly his), I didn’t! Success!! There’s hope for the three flights back to the states! We got off the plane and were hit by a wave of humidity. Home sweet home :)

We claimed our luggage and rented a little van to Zhongshan. We’d been looking forward to climbing the four flights of stairs back to our beds for about a week at that point. We unlocked our door and tumbled into our stuffy apartment and it’s times like these that I know I’m actually living in China because this crammed little dorm room felt like home :)