This past weekend was great. I travelled to Taishan to visit friends that I met in Shanghai at orientation. We are all living in different parts of China, we teach different age groups, and we have different living arrangements. It was fun listening to everyone's experiences thus far. One thing that we all had in common was no matter where we have all travelled, something has gone wrong. We were hoping to change that pattern in Taishan, but we ended up keeping the pattern alive.
The beginning went really smooth. I left Nanjing at 12:15am on Thursday night/Friday morning. I wasn't too sure what to expect from the night train, so I bought two beers, chugged them, then passed out with my ipod in my ears drowning out the snoring woman above me. Thankfully, I had the bottom bunk because the 7 other beds in the small compartment were occupied by the time I boarded the train. Even though the train reeked of stale smoke, I was able to sleep the entire way. When I boarded the train one of the workers took my ticket and gave me a card that told me which bed was mine. Then a half an hour before my stop the worker woke me up, and we traded cards again. Thank goodness he woke me up because I was out! I had packed myself a peanut butter and jelly which I enjoyed before arriving in Taishan.
I had printed out the directions, but clearly that was no help to me. I walked around the city for awhile trying to figure it out, but I got on the bus going the wrong way and ended up back in the exact same spot that I boarded the bus. Ugh. I wasn't too worried about it because I arrived before everyone else, so I had plenty of time to kill. I thought I had found the area where the hostel was, so I was wandering around there for a bit going in and out of shops. I met a nice, young, Chinese boy who I talked to via the translator on his computer in the shop. He has already emailed me...we're friends :) Finally, I found two girls who spoke enough English to tell a rickshaw driver where to take me for 6 yuan (less than 1 American dollar).
After checking in, I decided to eat some food. I went to a Chinese restaurant that did not have pictures. The menu was in all characters, and I still ordered pretty much what I wanted. This was a breakthrough for me...I figured out what some of them actually meant! Wooohoo!
Amanda and James were the next to show up and then Fred. We spent so much time catching up and laughing about our situations and our China mishaps. We toured the Dai Temple where Fred told us how his city "makes it rain." It's called seeding the clouds. None of us had ever heard of it, but it is a practice of literally making it rain. We are going to have some sweet t-shirts made describing this.
Kathleen and Barbara ended up taking the wrong bus from Bejing. They went to Jinan instead of Taishan. This is where the mishaps begin. This city is well known for Taishan mountain. It's the most spiritual mountain in all of China. We were all told that we should climb the mountain at night because the sunrise in the morning is breath taking. Since Kathleen and Barbara were not arriving until Saturday, we decided to wait to climb it until Saturday night/Sunday morning.
All of the girls spent most of Saturday exploring the city. We sat across the street from the demolition of a building, bought some sweatshirts for the hike, watched a sheep get slaughtered on the side of a pretty busy road with their friends laying there watching their soon-to-be fate (I'll spare you the photos of that), and ate some good food. The boys climbed the mountain. All of us took a nap from about 9pm to 11pm. We woke up, prepared our bags, layered our clothes, and took off at about 11:45pm.
We did not get back until 11:05am!!! Yea, that's almost 11 hours later! I am not even going to use the word hike to describe this torture because it was not a hike. It was 5 hours of climbing stairs in the dark. I hate stairs! Then we get up there and there are so many people...just like everywhere in China. We thought "maybe there won't be that many people because generally Chinese people don't like doing that strenuous of activity" -- we were soooo wrong!
(This is not even close to showing the amount of steps we climbed)
There were so many times on this climb that I wanted to sit down and tell the others that I would see them on their way back down. It was not fun...it was hell. My legs felt like jello, and the last hour of the climb is pretty much straight up with minimal places to rest. I had to have some serious motivational conversations with myself: "come on, Nikki, you can do this" or "ok, this is a great workout...my legs and butt are going to look fabulous" or "Nikki, don't puss out now" or "if you stop, you will be the only one who didn't climb this stupid mountain" or "you can do anything once," or "bikini, bikini, bikini..." This went on in my head pretty much the entire time after the first hour. Other thoughts that involve serious curse words went on pretty frequently too.
When we reached the top we expected to see something like this.
With everyone raving about it, we were pretty excited. Even though we were all about to drop, we pushed ourselves to make it to the tip to watch. HA! First, there were so many people that we couldn't see anything. Second, the sky was too cloudy to even see the sunrise at all! Third, the wind was blowing so hard that we couldn't see anything from the dirt being blown into our eyes. The wind was so bad that we couldn't even enjoy the bottle of wine that we had lugged up the mountain. Am I bitter about this? Absolutely!
(I hate this photo, but it is proof that I made it to the top--fake smile)
(These are not real smiles)
Amanda, Kathleen, and I decided we had had enough. We were taking the cable car down. However, the line was long, it costed 80 yuan, and it only took you half-way down the mountain--not worth it. We decided to suck it up and walk to the half-way point and take the buses down the rest of the way. By the time we reached the buses, the lines were outrageously long; we walked the whole way down. There were times that we would start laughing hysterically at this miserable situation, and then there were times where we just wanted to cry. We couldn't laugh because "it was too soon."
(Really smiling because we think that we are about to get on a bus...joke is on us!)
Since we didn't get back until after 11am, we all had to immediately jump in the shower because check-out was at noon. No sleep for us. Even though we have every right to complain, the boys earned it more than we did. They climbed that stupid thing twice!!! No thank you! Once in a lifetime is enough for me. It is now Tuesday, and I can barely walk. I had to climb the stairs to the fifth floor for class this morning and it was horrible. My calves are by far the worst, but my quads are pretty terrible too. I don't ever want to climb 7,000 stairs again. It felt like I climbed at least 20,000, but apparently it was just 7,000; however, I am skeptical of this number. I think someone is low balling...who would really count that many steps anyway? It would make the climb 10x worse than it already is. I am looking forward to the day that I can say that I am happy that I did this climb. Right now, I am too bitter. Although it was hell, we did get a cool ninja shot...
From now on, when I am going to climb a mountain I will settle for the cable car and sunset.
Cheers!
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