We Leave Tomorrow

Wednesday at 11:30 a.m. Whitney, our head teacher, walks in to my class room and says we need to have a group meeting at lunch. Upon arriving at the lunch table, she announces that we are leaving for our Beijing vacation tomorrow (Thursday) after we are through teaching at the public school. We were ecstatic! I didn't think we'd have a March vacation, but 28 hours later we were on a night train to Beijing.
Have you ever traveled by train? Or an over-night train? I think it's my favorite way to travel, although some parts are a little awkward. We got "hard sleeper" seats. That means we slept on one of three rows of bunk beds. Bruce and I slept across from each other on the top bunk. Below us were 4 Chinese people. So we fell asleep and woke up 8 am the next morning right outside of Beijing. The hardest part of the train ride was not the beds but trying to use the "squatters." They are holes in the ground (at ground level) that you use to go to the bathroom. I thought I could control my bladder long enough to finish the train ride and wait for a real toilet. My bladder had other plans. I grabbed the toilet paper roll and nervously walked to the makeshift train bathroom with the dreaded squatter. I opened the door and hoped for the best. Turns out, it's not so bad. After relieving myself I stood quick and heard a clink-clink-clink. I patted my pocket for my ticket, and it was gone! I realized it had fallen down the hole (and out the train onto the side of the road)! In humiliation, I found an attendant and made charades to her about what happened to my ticket. After a few tries she understood what happened. Luckily, the ticket only cost 10 yuan (about $2 US) to replace and everything else went well. That was the beginning of our Beijing adventure.