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The China Gap Year!
I was only in Jiujiang for two days to meet up with a different group of friends to continue my travelling, but as it turned out quite a lot happened (by which I mean quite a lot went wrong), I feel it merits a blog entry of it's own. So, here's a breakdown of what went on:
- I arrived in Nanchang too late to catch any buses or trains so was forced to share a very expensive two-hour taxi ride back to Jiujiang with three grumpy guys who kept shouting questions I couldn't understand at me in rapid Chinese. I spent the journey staring out of the taxi window thinking about how much I hated everyone and only cheered up after I'd got the driver to drop me off at KFC.
- Having lost the house keys whilst travelling (again), Julie had to come and meet me to pass on the spare set we'd left with her. Unfortunately the padlock on the front gate was so rusted that even with the key I couldn't open it; instead I had to climb the 2m iron fence and have my enormous rucksack hoisted over after me just to get to the front door.
- The next day I became the world's most embarrassing teacher as multiple students (and passersby) witnessed me climbing in and out of my own garden via the fence as I tried to finish all of my errands for the day.
- Everyone's trains were delayed, so I spent the time whilst I waited with Julie and her son, Leo, trying to break the padlock off the gate. Julie had brought a chisel and a hammer, so we spent about twenty minutes attacking the padlock with this and filling the street with the clang of metal on metal until we finally admitted defeat and I climbed back over the fence and into the house for cooking oil to loosen the padlock up with.
- After everyone had arrived - Beth, Cat, Henry, Naomi, Nold and Pete - we sat about downstairs, drinking and exchanging stories and gossip from the last few weeks until, without any of us quite realising how, we were all very drunk. This somehow escalated into a full-blown cushion and toilet roll fight, although the consequences were messier for some... namely Nold, who vomited all over the sink, did his best to clean it up with a handtowel and then passed out on Nicole's bed.
- The next day was meant for cleaning up after ourselves and, for the others, washing all their dirty clothes before they set off again. My train was leaving early afternoon, 4 hours before theirs, so I left them all dozing in my room and preparing for a nap when I set out for the station. I'd barely made it across the road before I realised I'd forgotten my towel and had to go back for it, which is where I met Henry and Pete crashing down the stairs shouting, "it's our train too! WE'RE ON THE SAME TRAIN!" Upstairs, everyone was flying about, snatching wet clothes back off the clothes line and desperately throwing their things into suitcases. It turned out that after I'd left, someone had joked about how funny it would be if everyone was on the same train as me after all and made Naomi and Cat just paranoid enough to check the times on their own tickets, which was when they realised that they were on the same train and had less than an hour to pack and get to the station. After 10 minutes of frantic packing, we burst out onto the street and launched ourselves into taxis to the station.
- Arriving at the station, Nold realised that he'd left his only two pairs of trousers in the washing machine during the panic and was, in fact, still wearing his pyjamas. I like to think I would have been more sympathetic if it had been less funny. Other casualties of our hasty exit included cereal (expensive!) and Beth's phone and ipod.
Anyway, the main thing was that we all made it onto the (right) train and managed to get to Shanghai - we still get nervous talking about how close a call it was!
- comments
Pete's Dad Genius, Sheer genius......this made us laugh so much, esp the thought of Nold standing in the station in his pyjamas.
Jim Yeah, and how did Nold get round not having any proper strides? I've just checked the Shanghai blog and there is no mention. Is Nold feeding live chickens to tigers and partying in Shanghai just in his nightwear? And skiing?