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On Wednesday morning, the big group of volunteers split up, and we all started heading off to our different projects. The Xinjiang and Jiangxi volunteers were the first to go, heading to Beijing West station at 8am. It's (big surprise) massive, with huge waiting rooms where hundreds of people wait together for their trains. It's insanely crowded, but for the equivalent of 50p you can buy your way into VIP, which is almost empty and gets you onto the platform a little before everyone else.
The station was my first real experience of the no-queueing thing everyone had warned us about: we got to the barriers a little early so were at the front, but as soon as the official call went out, there was surge of people rushing forward and trying to worm and push past us. On the other side of the barriers, all the Chinese people were literally sprinting down the corridor to the elevators to make sure they were first on the train.
Nicole and I had a slight 'mare getting onto the train. Our tickets said we were in carriage 2, but we didn't notice the character before the 2. When we reached what we thought was our carriage, a shouty guard who spoke no English blocked us from climbing on board and pointed vaguely down the platform. We managed to get the word "7" from him, which confused us even more, and he got another passenger who had also come to the wrong carriage to lead us down the platform, supposedly to the right carriage - except we weren't in the same carriage as her. Neither of us had a clue what was going on, but we eventually managed to find our carriage by trying to get on at every opportunity until a guard finally let us past.
We were in the hard-sleeper section of the train. There were 22 beds, each with a top, middle and bottom bunk, paired off into small open compartments so there were 6 people per compartment. Our carriage was packed with children and families - also a dog, which may or may not be allowed - but noone who spoke English. Nicole and I decided to hide in our bunks for a bit until things calmed down enough for us to go find the other Jiangxi volunteers, who were together in a different carriage. We didn't realise that Dan and Beth had already been looking for us, with no idea we'd been moved or where we were, and getting shouted at by more guards on the way. Turns out the "2" carriage we'd first tried to get onto was a goods carriage, which they could only get to through a carriage full of more shouty train officials.
They managed to find us in the end, and we went down to join the rest of the group in their carriage, which was the quietest of all of them and the only one with no children. We met two Chinese students there and embarrassed ourselves trying to speak Chinese to them. We taught each other card games and played Cheat for ages, whilst an older man they were travelling with took lots of photos of us all and more Chinese people on neighbouring bunks leaned round to watch us, and laugh when people got caught out cheating. For lunch we had the Chinese version of pot noodles (nobody wanted to try the buffet car, because Dan had such a bad experience there earlier in the journey. He tried to ask the chef for food and the chef laughed at him so hard he cried and then called his friend over to have a laugh too). I can't think what else we did really, apart from talk, listen to Dan sing and play guitar for a bit, and sleep, but the journey went quite quickly considering it was 16 hours. Nicole and I arrived in Jiujiang at 4.30am (a train official comes around to make sure everyone is awake for their stop) where we were collected by our waiban, Winston, and driven to our new home!
It is ENORMOUS. I'm not even kidding, if you counted all the extra, spare rooms it would probably be a 7 bedroom house. On the ground floor we have a huge reception room with wicker furniture and a TV the size of a Shetland pony, a small dining room, a kitchen bigger than mine at home, a bathroom (with bath!) and a stuffy extra room with a falling-to-pieces bunk bed. On the first floor we have another bathroom, mine and Nicole's rooms, a spare bedroom and our clothes room (all it has in it are two frames for hanging clothes and an ironing board). Each of the bedrooms has two double beds. Mine and Nicole's have aircon; hers has a door onto a conservatory-type area and a dresser, mine has a huge desk and another huge TV. Upstairs again, we have two empty rooms which we'll probably never use because they're filthy and boiling hot. Actually, I lied about the empty part, one has a moulting plastic Christmas tree and an ancient computer that was originally in my room in it. Unfortunately, our "roof hang-out area", which you get to from the second floor, is really ugly, but as there's nowhere to sit we probably won't use it anyway.
The whole house is really dirty. I didn't realise quite how dirty at first, and wandered around barefoot for a while which left my feet pitch-black. We've found a cockroach in the kitchen too - he lives under the sink and is called Horace (the worst name we could think of to inflict upon him). We're reasonably confident it's just Horace, because Nicole bravely poked around under the sink when we were cleaning and couldn't find any others. We started cleaning as soon as we'd bought supplies this morning, but there's still a lot to do. I cleaned my whole room really thoroughly first, so I'd have one safe place to hide from the dirt and unpack my things; I've swept, mopped, dusted everything, cleaned plug sockets, cables, my bedside light (I cleaned this so well I broke it) and scrubbed the whole desk out with some strong-smelling Mr Muscle stuff. I don't know what it was, but if there was anything living in the desk I'm pretty sure I killed it. We've swept and mopped Nicole's room and the kitchen too, and Nicole scrubbed the sink, cleaned out a lot of cupboards and sorted out some of the counters too. Neither of us trust the kitchen yet though. We want to clean all the grouting, which is dark orange, the fridge, the shelves, the cupboards and wash all of the kitchen equipment a bazilllion times before we use any of it. Right now we're using new glasses we bought for ourselves from the supermarket, and we keep them either in the fridge or in our rooms because they're the only places we feel they're safe!
Next, we want to sweep and mop the wooden floors in the landing, dining room, reception room and on the stairs - because you can literally feel the the grime on them, sort out the bathrooms and finish the kitchen. We know we won't use the second floor already, and we don't even know how to get into the basement, so we're not to worried about those yet.
Lots of love, (Cinder)ella (ahahaha see what I did there! I'm so funny.)
xxxxx
PS. We bought literally all the cleaning equipment we could think of from the supermarket and it cost less than £20. IT IS EVEN CHEAPER THAN BOYES HERE!
PPS. The rubber gloves are made for baby hands though, I nearly dislocated a thumb trying to put them on.
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