Long Breaks

I had class early this morning and then had a long break (six hours) since my schedule is switched around this week. I decided to use this time to go to the train station and pick up my tickets for Shanghai this weekend. I am not sure why, but you order the tickets online and then go to the train station a few days before to pick them up.... it doesn't make much sense, but such is life in China. I took the city bus, I knew which one to take and the last stop is the train station so it wasn't too hard. I handed the lady my passport and two pieces of paper (as I was told to do) and she started trying to speak Chinese to me. I just shrugged and half-smiled and she rolled her eyes and kept typing. She printed one ticket and handed it to me and motioned for me to leave, but I needed two tickets. So I handed my stuff back and she kept saying no until finally it turned out that I had to be 5 RMB (less than one dollar) to get her to print the second ticket, so FINALLY I just gave her the money and I got my second ticket.

I was at the bus stop outside of the train station looking around and trying to figure out where exactly I should be standing. A girl who had been watching me look around kind of smiled and so I pointed to the bus number that I wanted and to where I was standing to make sure I was in the right spot. This just over-complicated things though. The girl spoke some English, but not much and so she thought I was seeing if that bus went to my school, soon she was on the phone to her friend and telling me exactly how many stops it would go by. In the end I was standing in the right spot, but I figured that out by the bus pulling up, not because of my helpful new friend lol.

Nothing else too exciting happened today. There were a couple of things that I thought of today that I forgot to mention about Mom and Dad's visit. At one point we were waiting for the city bus outside of my school (I wanted them to try it out) and it was taking forever so we decided to hail a cab but I had to say Walmart since that's the only place I know how to say in that end of town. That time it worked out fine, we got dropped off right there and walked to the hotel. On Sunday when we were coming back from the Mountain I said the exact same thing and the driver nodded and told me how much and we somehow ended up in the opposite end of town at a hotel that sounds nothing like Walmart, I then just had to point when the driver had to turn until we were back in the right end of town; he was mad at me, but it wasn't really MY fault, not really his either, my Chinese is anything but good.

We were at Danny's Cafe for dinner on Friday night and Mom and Dad both got their food and mine hadn't come yet, but I didn't think much of it. Then Mom and Dad were almost finished their food and mine hadn't come, so dad went to ask the waitress (who spoke zero English) about it, so that went well as I'm sure you can imagine. She ended up phoning the owner (he speaks English) and handing me the phone to explain to him that I hadn't gotten my sandwich and then he explained it to her; I eventually got my sandwich. But I just thought it was hilarious that something so simple was so difficult when none of us know how to say it to each other.

Anywho, now I need to get these tests marked before I go to Shanghai! Oh and I almost forgot, today I looked down at one of my kids pages and they had written the date, November 13th and I got excited and said "It's my cousin's Birthday!" And the student said REALLY? Happy Birthday to your cousin!!!!! So Mark, happy birthday from me and one of my kids!