Up, up and away!

Finally a break. We have been going pretty steady at work now for a few months, and we are extremely ready to head out and do some relaxing, resting and most of all exploring!

This week seemed really long, and was made longer by the fact that we had to work Saturday. Paul was lucky enough to finangle freedom from work by 9:30 in the morning, so he spent most of the day showing off the Jinshitan market to Cameron’s parents who have been visiting for the last week or so. Its always fun to see peoples’ reaction to the chaos and energy of the market. Not to mention the pig trotters and mummified remains of unidentifiable animals.

Kristen was not so lucky. She had to work until 4:00 and was pretty tired by the time she made it home. None the less, she vailiantly scooped herself up and we left to take the qingway into Dalian- the first step on our journey to the airport. Unfortunately for us, most of the students, teachers and support staff were also making their way into town, accompanied by the hordes of day trippers visiting the beaches, sights and of course the theme park (Discoveryland is only a few blocks from our school).  Kristen battled her way in front of the crowd in order to get through the doors, just seconds before uniformed guards shut the doors on everyone still outside (Paul, and traveling partners Lauralee and Ryan included). Paul managed to talk his way inside (with the help of student translators) and they met up with Kris who had procured four tickets from the harassed kiosk attendant. In any case we made it to train, and even got seats!

Oh and Paul secured some treasure when he found a patch from one of the guards uniforms-obviously ripped off in the crowded maelstrom.

From then on, it was smooth sailing. We had Chinese KFC for dinner with Lauralee and Ryan, got through security and had a minute to say goodbye to Cameron and family just as they were calling us to board the plane.

When we landed in Beijing, we managed to find our bags (although Paul’s was wet, and covered with something that smelled suspiciously like urine) and the shuttle bus that would take us to another terminal. From there we tracked down our second shuttle bus that would take us to the hotel we had booked, which turned out to be just a few minutes away from where we caught the first bus. And so a new travel game was formed: Shuttle bus ping pong.

We had some drinks in the little coffee shop and fell asleep to Chinese announcers calling an English football match.

The next day we were up early for some breakfast in the hotel before catching our flight to Guilin.

Hotel bathroom sign in the best "transient" hotel in Beijing