This past weekend I took a train to YueYang, the second largest city in Hunan. It sits on the second largest lake in China. And I stayed next to the second largest public square in China (behind Beijing’s famous T-Square). And coincidentally, I currently have the second largest head in China.

The train ride there was horrendous. It left at 3am, and even though I had purchased the tickets days in advance, I still didn’t get a seat. So after staying up late. taking a 2am motorcycle to the train station, and sprinting down the platform to the last car (where there are sometimes open seats), I found myself sitting on a seat with a family of four for the trip into Changsha.

One half of one of my butt cheeks was happy … it was on a seat. I couldn’t sleep a wink and was continually kicked in the face by the sleeping boy next to me. On top of all that, I was fighting a pretty nasty cough and growing cold-like-symptoms. Teaching in America exposes you to everything and strengthens your immune system, so I really haven’t been sick in about four years. But the pollution, incessant talking in class, and exhausting nature of what I’m doing were starting to catch up to me.

At 6am, we arrived in Changsha and almost everyone got off. What a relief … I finally got my own seat and could stretch out and sleep a little. On the other hand, I was now terrified that I’d doze through my stop at YueYang, so I tried to sleep with one eye open. Sure enough, when I awoke from my first snooze, the couple sitting across from me told me that I had missed my stop. After an initial freak out, I asked 3 or 4 more passengers to confirm the information … and I found out that they were simply wrong. Whew!

So I arrived at about 8am. After a quick phone call, Steve, my cousin, picked me up from the station. Yep, you read that right … there are Webels in China, and we had a little reunion this weekend! I hadn’t yet met Erica or their two adorable children, so it was great to make the acquaintance of the whole Wang (that’s our Chinese family name) family!

Staying at their place was just like being back in America for the weekend. Spaghetti, grilled cheese, pot roast … it was delicious. We had a little “celebration” on Sunday, singing some songs and listening to a podcasted message from the states together … how encouraging that was! And it was wonderful to talk to them, learning about their life in China and getting tons of interesting and useful information about how to survive. It had been over a month since I’d conversed significantly with a native English speaker, so it was nice to just speak normally and be understood easily!

I had also planned to visit Amy, a WorldTeach volunteer in the city … but when I showed up at her apartment I was delighted to find that Mary Claire, Joe, and Emily, three other nearby volunteers, had also come by to hang out for the evening! We shared “war stories” about life and teaching in China for a while then took a long walk to a local park. Then on Sunday Amy and I met Jo, a Chinese university student who helped us during our orientation, for lunch before I hopped on the train back to Loudi.

The ride back was fantastic. I not only had a seat, but there was nobody across from my so I could put my feet up. I listened to an entire series of sermons from Four Corners on my iPod, played with a couple kids, and talked to 3 different English speakers during the trip (one from a town that I hope to visit sometime this winter).

All in all, it was a great weekend. Traveling in China is just plain fun. And it’s a good thing, because I just got my ticket for next weekend’s 23-hour train ride to Shanghai to visit Sarah!

Posted to webeldotnet on Tuesday, September 26th, 2006 at 11:40 pm EST in China & My Life (comment feed). If you refer to this post on your blog, please trackback. Thanks!