There’s an upside and a downside to every outing…usually.
Once again, I find myself with an obscene amount of vacation time after only teaching for one month. During this holiday, there happens to be a wedding right in the middle…so, I decided to hang out around Beijing and fly by the seat of my pants. I was online exploring things to do in the Beijing area (to see if there were things I hadn’t done) and I found a white water rafting place. ‘Hmm…could be interesting,’ I thought to myself. I sent an email out to the group to see if there was anyone interested in rafting. After people decided what they were going to do, I headed to the train ticket office to see if we could get tickets for THE NEXT DAY… If you have learned anything from me during my time here, you should know that this is nearly impossible. But I went anyway. I took my awesome friend Gretl with me because I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to communicate my needs to the ticket seller. We waited in line for what seemed like an hour (probably only about 30 min). Got to the window and the woman said, “什么都没有” (shenme dou meiyou), which means “nothing!” I was skeptical (even though I knew this was an impossible task) so we made sure that we heard her correctly and then went on our way. A little sad about the lack of train tickets, I headed back to the school to brainstorm with Gretl how else we could get there.
We checked buses, private driver, etc. Everything was either unavailable or unaffordable. I sent out a mass text message that said we couldn’t get train tickets and to see what the group wanted to do. They wanted to keep trying.
The next morning my friend Ming (who was actually coming with us–poor Gretl was helping us organize and not even coming on the trip) went to the busiest train station in Beijing. (She did this because sometimes if you go to the station instead of the ticket office you might be able to get tickets.) She couldn’t even get INSIDE the train station. When she finally did get inside she had to wait in line. She finally heard from someone that there were no tickets to ANYWHERE for that day and the next day (Friday and Saturday). Her long trip to the station was worth nothing. We made an executive decision and informed the group that we would be heading north to a closer, less adventurous river to do some “drifting” down a river. 🙂 They were all still “in.”
That evening, after two friends finished teaching, we headed for one of the main bus stations. Tickets to the nearby suburbs are fairly easy to get. Actually, we were technically using a city bus that was faster than the other city buses. Ming had arranged our “hostel” (actually a farmhouse–called 农家院 in Chinese) and a driver to get us to the “hostel” for when we got off the city bus. Transportation to our destination cost approx. Y18. 🙂
We were pleasantly surprised to discover that our driver was taking us far away from the city and into the mountains via some beautiful scenery.
We arrived at the 农家院 to find a wonderful supper waiting for us. All of the food was farm fresh and delicious. We got to try some new things too. Our room was equally awesome! Not “awesome” in the way you would think… Awesome because all 8 of us got to stay in the same room and it was fun to have great company. (BTW–people who came on the trip included, Hannah, Hannah’s Brother, Chinese friend Ming, Joseph, Micah, Tim, Chinese friend Jacob, and yours truly…aren’t you glad you know now?) We had tons of laughs and giggles about four of the guys sharing one enormous bed. (It was actually four twin-sized beds shoved together with a piece of what was basically plywood laying on top of them.) hehehe….
In the morning, the 老板 (boss) made us breakfast and drove us to the place where we would eventually hop in the rafts.
Here is where the pictures come. Except…when you are surrounded by water with water splashing into your raft and onto you, you don’t really want your electronic devices along with you. This was such a bittersweet day for me, lover of images, to not have my camera. (I even brought my point and shoot with me that day because I knew the DSLR would not have been a wise choice.) The rafting people recommended not bringing anything electronic: phone, camera, mp3, etc. I struggled and struggled with the decision but eventually decided to leave it. The sky was a gorgeous deep blue, the water was lovely, the cliffs were precipitous, and it was an all around great day! I wish I could share it with you in photos. One of the highlights of the day was sharing a boat with Joseph who is a laugh a minute. He also didn’t like the way I paddled so I got to enjoy most of the ride without the work. 🙂 We almost capsized at one set of rapids but managed to keep our boat right.
After the river journey we were carted back to the place where we stored our backpacks and decided to grill some chuan’r 串 (with the sole purpose of having the sticks and grill to use for roasting marshmallows). After relaxing with beer, chuan’r (and s’mores) our driver took us back to the bus station from the night before to catch the bus back to Beijing. We arrived in the city in time for a Peking duck dinner and headed to our respective homes. It was a really amazing day in God’s beautiful scenery enjoying time with a great group of people!
(It’s actually 996 words, but who’s counting?)
