Well that was the weirdest trip I've had to China in a while.
Flying internationally without kids is a cinch! I'm left wondering what I was complaining about for our first 3 years here. I watched Star Trek (ok), Adventureland (good), X-Men: Wolverine (eh), 3 episodes of 24, and a couple of other movies that I've already forgotten. The flight's highlight though, were the kickin' tunes. I tapped my foot through a Jimmy Buffet concert and I would've started dancing if the old Chinese lady beside me wasn't actually sleeping on my arm. Good thing she had those 2 seats all to herself. And then I stumbled on the Ricky Scaggs bluegrass version of Superfreak. Oh wow. I think Rick James made a huge mistake leaving the mandolin out of the original version. A short sampling of my latest musical discovery, Raphael Saadiq, and suddenly we were in China. 15 hours sure does fly when you're having fun! I found the gate for my next flight and settled in for a short nap. I awoke from my nap to find my gate completely empty, which led to about 30 seconds of panic before I became the last passenger to board the flight - just in time for a 50 minute delay!
One flight and an airport bus ride later, and I was on the streets on Wuhan looking for a bus to Jingzhou - which is hard to do when all of the bus stations have already closed. Luckily, a trustworthy-looking guy in front of the bus station promised that his buddy had a bus on the other side of town that could take me. He told me how much he wanted to take me there, I told him I didn't have that much, and away we went. Funny how that works, huh? On the way to the bus, my new friend mentioned that the bus was actually going to another city, but they would drop me off at the North Gate of Jingzhou. Fair enough. Then we got to the bus and there weren't any seats. No problem, 30 hours of international travel makes a 3 hour ride on the floor of a bus seem as easy as banana pancakes. Then we didn't leave for 45 minutes. And when we did start to leave, the driver explained that we weren't going to stop in Jingzhou. A small riot broke out, but then calmed back down as the passengers all enjoyed an Oscar worthy performance by the guy who dubbed Nicholas Cage's voice in the Chinese version of Con-Air.
After another nap I woke up to hear the driver screaming out for the Jingzhou stop. The endless black abyss outside of the bus window didn't look like Jingzhou, but I was off the bus. At 11:30pm, the smart thing to do was to pull my two suitcases off of the highway and down the exit ramp. Halfway down, another trustworthy-looking young guy (the country's full of these guys) came running up to me. In downtown Chattanooga I would assume I was about to get mugged, but on this empty, Chinese highway I assumed he was going to offer me a cup of tea and try to practice his English. Turns out he was a taxi driver waiting for someone like me to come along. He wanted an outrageous price to take me to my house and I wanted to pay it.
When I finally arrived at the house, I kept thinking how strange our house looks. Then I remembered that I think that every time I come back. The two girls who lived here during the summer did a good job and kept the house from falling apart or becoming a moldy cave. Now I'm off to get another house ready for our arriving family, get back in touch with our brothers and sisters, and go to sleep at the wrong time of the day.
Please be praying for Lisa and the kids' trip in 10 days or so. She'll be a little busier than me and probably won't get to watch as many movies on the flight.
Posted by daleeatsrice at August 22, 2009 5:04 PM