Getting back to normal!

I didn't do anything too exciting my last day in Bangkok. I walked around a lot and went to an aquarium which was pretty cool. My travel day was SO long. I left the hostel a bit after 7 am to go to the airport and by the time I got to the Shanghai airport it was just after 8 pm. I had to take the subway from the airport to the train station which takes almost two hours. On the plus side I now know where I went wrong with my subway trip on my way to the airport before I left for Thailand so that's a bonus lol!
I was nervous to get my train ticket on my own; usually Harriet does that for us. So I followed the signs to the ticket counter only to find it was closed, but there was another one further down the hall so I braced myself for how hard it would be since I don't speak Chinese. But I literally said "Jinhua Xi" and he said "tonight?" and I nearly passed out I was so excited! After I got my ticket which left in 1.5 hours (so I thought I had lots of time and could get food since I was STARVING) I was so proud of myself. That's when things actually got a little more difficult though.
I started following the signs to the departures floor and found my way to two escalators sitting side by side. As I went to get on one I realized they were both coming down towards me from upstairs; not helpful. I looked down the hallway though and there were two more so I figured they'd both be going up; no such luck, they were also just coming down towards me. There was a man standing a few feet away that looked like he worked there so I pointed above me and said upstairs with a question mark? He just said "closed." I explained no, no it's not; I have to catch a train! He looked at my ticket and said walk down that way (the way I had just come from). I walked for a couple minutes when a lady saw my ticket and said where are you going? Go back there!!! So I walk back to that man who said, no, no walk that way. I felt like a boomerang lol!
Finally I walked a completely different direction to avoid both of them and saw a chef from one of the restaurants standing outside and I asked him how to get upstairs, he pointed at the escalators I had already tried. I said no, they both go down; he didn't really get it until he walked over to them with me and proceeded to look extremely perplexed. Then he pushed a button that stopped it and said go fast! So I ran up them and another guy who was clearly having the same problem followed me. When I got up there though we still had to go up one more level and those escalators were both coming down towards us. The Chinese guy who had come up after me spoke to some man and looked at me and pointed back toward the escalator. I said "shit" which KIND OF sounds like "xie xie" which is thank you, because the guy responded by saying you're welcome in Chinese lol! This guy at least now knew what we had to do so I just followed him, we had to walk all the way to the opposite end of the building and there we found escalators that actually went up. It turned out this guy (who could not speak ANY english) was also on my train so he showed me to the gate we had to wait at (which I definitely would've been able to do by myself but it was still nice) then he showed me all the way to the train car I was on and then ran to his lol. I had forgotten how nice Chinese people were, but between him and the guy who stopped the escalator for me I felt happier to be back lol.
They kind of made up for me being instantly reminded of the pushing, cutting in line and spitting the entire way from the airport to the train station on the subway.
I ended up getting back to Jinhua at 3 am and after much convincing I got the cab driver to drive me all the way to my apartment building instead of dropping me off at the gate which was awesome. The next day I didn't do a whole lot; did some laundry, hungout with Mel and then went out for dinner and to the Red House. Yesterday I went into town and did some work and finally got some cheerios so I at least had breakfast food in my apartment! I need to go tot he market today! I also need to fully unpack today AND go through all of my pictures!