Revived

Well, like Oliver Twist Untamed has been abandoned for quite a while. Time to give her some water and watch her grow. I’d like to say I was busy dissolving the cultural and linguistic barriers between the U.S. and China. Or maybe that I’ve been spending all of my free time volunteering at the local orphanage. Perhaps I was studying the language of the great country I’ll be living in for the next year. I’d like to say one of these things is true. Unfortunately, the sad truth of the matter is I’ve created my own personal prison within my spider infested apartment. What keeps me locked up you may ask? The simplest answer would be copyright laws (or lack thereof). China’s inexistent copyright laws have allowed me to create an American utopia full of vampires, sex, plastic surgery and the occasional theoretical physicist (AKA True Blood, Nip Tuck, Entourage and Big Bang Theory). Furthermore, youku.com (China’s version of youtube) is another amazing example of China’s inexistent copyright laws. I can watch anything I want (currently loading Titanic). I even get to watch the CW’s Vampire Diaries. Lame, I know but I love it!

So, while I wait for Titanic to buffer I’ll take a few moments to tell the 7ish people who actually read this about my vacation. Because I am a special foreign teacher I got extra vacation days. My school was only closed for 4 days, but I was off from the 30th until the 11th. I went with a small group of people to Chengdu and Xi’an. To get to Chengdu I took a 19 hour train ride. Luckily, we had soft sleepers (the most elegant way to travel by train). It was a small room with 4 beds, a table and a love little window. I took the initiative to download the majority of season 2 of True Blood so our little posse watched 8 hours of Vampire sex, took 1 hour for dinner, and then went to sleep. We woke up in a beautiful city of 14 million people. The first moments in Chengdu were extremely scary. As we were leaving the train station I realized I didn’t have my wallet…or my passport…or my debit card…or my id…Like the idiot I am I keep everything together. So, two of us rushed back to the train praying it hadn’t left yet to search for my lost items. THANK THE LORD, after looking for a few minutes in our room someone found it. Major catastrophe avoided.

Everything about Chengdu was amazing. The weather was great, the air was (surprisingly) clean, and most importantly there were PANDAS!!! Lazy little bastards, but cute as hell. We didn’t eat much Chinese food because there was this amazing Tex Mex restaurant with real ground beef, real cheese and real margaritas. Quite pricey but totally worth it. Chengdu also has a large Tibetan population so we got to try some of their local dishes. Let me just say this: Tibetan food is absolutely heavenly. They eat a lot of Yak which is delicious. Somewhat gamey, but amazing none the less. Besides, I just like the idea of saying I ate yak.

I left Chengdu with one thought: I want to live here. Sorry, fam. Next stop, Xi’an – home of the terracotta warriors. Travel during national week is a pain in the butt. The trains are packed and it’s very difficult to get a good ticket. We were lucky enough to get hard sleepers. The train ride was 13 hours long. Hard sleepers are interesting. There are no doors or rooms in the car, only a bunch of bunk beds, 3 beds high. We all got top bunks. So, the first problem was actually getting up to the top. I’m 5’8 or 5’9 and I had to reach to even touch my bed. The Chinese people were looking at me like I was crazy because I couldn’t figure out how to get up the makeshift ladder. The major problem is that the bed is only about 2.5 feet from the ceiling. So, once you make it up the ladder you have to shimmy down the bed and just lay down the entire time because there isn’t room to sit up. Just imagine a coffin. Yeah, let me tell you that was a fun ride! Actually, it wasn’t that bad. I took some ambien and went to sleep. When I woke up at 5 am we were pulling into Xi’an.

I didn’t like Xi’an. Number 1, it rained the entire time we were there. Number 2, I was sick for the majority of the trip, and Number 3, the people kept trying to rip me off! Thus, I won’t spend much time on this portion of the vacation. I saw the terracotta warriors which I interesting for about 5 minutes. Highlight of the trip: Budweiser and Subway.