OK so finally have something exciting to write about. So the last few weeks of school have been dragging on. We had a long stretch working a few saturdays BUT we made it! Now we feel like we are on the down hill. We had four days off for Christmas, three days off this weekend for new years, then the week after is finals (so no teaching YAY!). After that there is one week of our new classes, then we’re off to sand and sun in Thailand for our winter holiday!!!
For our four days off we headed down south to Hong Kong! We took the bullet train after work on friday to Gaungzhou. The train traveled between 285 and 307 km/h!! We went the entire 1000km or so distance in just 4 hours! We didn’t do much in Guangzhou, we basically just had dinner and slept in the creepiest/dirtiest place I think I have ever slept. Danny mentioned it felt more like camping than a hostel. In the morning we had all you can eat TEPPANYAKI. Read more about it here ---> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teppanyaki. It is probably the best meal you will ever have in your life and is worth the 1000+ flight to asia. Basically a guy cooks amazing food right in front of you. When we could eat no more, we hobbled to a different train station (one of the considerably slower trains) and got into Hong Kong around 6.
That night we were ecstatic to find that the convenience store across the street from our hostel had not only beer but hard alcohol, doritoes, a deli, organic soups, juice, chocolate milk and CHEESE! Yes, real cheese, and all kinds of cheese exactly like we can find at home. All of this was quite exciting as the nearest cheese is a 45 minute cab ride from our home in Wuhan, and its not that great. It’s really amazing how accustomed we are to the food we eat, and how much of a difference it can make. I mean just imagine if all you could eat everyday was Chinese food, greasy, not sure if thats meat or vegetable Chinese food. It’s awesome and exciting at first, but after a while and more than a few pounds (cough danny) you need something different. So all in all I enjoyed the variety of food and restaurants available. I even found an organic bakery and a health food store!
Unfortunately, Danny could not enjoy the food as much as I did, because he ended up getting the stomach flu the next day. We were headed out to explore Hong Kong in the day light because we had just gone out the night before and hadn’t seen much. Right before we get on the Metro he grabs my arm and tells me he doesn’t feel well and is going back to the hostel. I thought he was just a hang over, and he told us he would meet up with us later. Long story short, he spent the day (Sunday) violently ill, going from the bath room to the bed, and I had no idea until I got home around 8pm. Danny did not start to feel better until the next morning, but he still did not end up leaving the hostel room until we had to go home on Tuesday.
Our Christmas was spent getting home in a cab, then on a train, then a metro, which took us to the plane to Wuhan. We really missed being with everyone, but it was not that bad, just a long travel day.
All in all we didn’t get to as much as we wanted but I loved Hong Kong and would like to go back. The one flaw we found with the city, and this might just be my experience was that people were generally not very friendly. I had a couple of neat cab drivers who gave us advice and we chatted with but everyone else was cold or unhelpful. Hopefully others have had different experiences.
Our next adventure is Shanghai this weekend! Will write back with more news then.
Ps. It is a pain to add pictures to this site, so I’m sorry I will try and add some but it is a very time consuming process. If you can go on facebook or know someone who can show you facebook, there will be more pictures there.
