Return from Inner Mongolia!

Sun 9/6/2009

Inner Mongolia was quite an experience! Let's start from the beginning. The 6 of us left on Saturday evening and made our way to the Beijing train station. If any of you think NY Port Authority or NY Penn station is big, you ain't seen nothing! The train station in Beijing makes NY's Port Authority or NY Penn station look like your local train station. It was absolutely ridiculous how many people were there. What was even more mind blowing was that people and families were just camped out sleeping on the street waiting for their train. Anyways getting back to our trip...we had one of the Chinese staff come with us to Inner Mongolia and she supposedly knew her way around Beijing, but we ended up getting lost and going to the wrong side of Beijing and wait for it...we missed our 9pm sleeper train to Inner Mongolia. Alright time to regroup. The good news is we were able to trade in our tickets for the 11pm train, but we weren't gonna get to sleep in the soft sleeper train as we originally purchased. Instead we had to trade down to economy class. So we're thinking economy class...it can't be that bad right? Well if you've never taken a train in China, you're about to get a lesson in culture. In China, if you're riding on economy class even if its a 10 hour + train ride, you'll be squeezed in there with or without a seat for the duration of the ride. I'm not talking NYC Subway squeeze, I'm talking squeezed like chickens in a coop. At first, we all couldn't believe this was actually happening. It was absolutely unreal and an experience we all will never forget. On top of all this, they actually tried to squeeze a food cart down the aisle followed by a lady selling newspapers and then a guy selling ice cream. We were literally on top of each other to make way for them to come through the aisle. Anyways we were stuck and had no way out and with the cigarette smoke everywhere, it really made things unbearable. So what to do when you're stuck in a situation like that? Make friends with the people you're stuck with for the next 10 hours. At first, we could tell the locals were looking at us silly Americans and wondering why we were riding in economy class, after all their perception of us is that we're Americans so we must have money. So we explained to them that we missed our original sleeper train @ 9pm and that's why we ended up on this train. Somehow, that story carried onto a lengthy conversation and then I pulled out my portable DVD player (thanks Phil) and everyone around us got so excited. As we were going through the DVD selection, the Chinese instantly recognized Will Smith on the cover of the "Hitch" DVD, so we ended up watching Hitch and the Chinese were all so excited and appreciative for that. So much so that they ended up sharing or giving up their seats to us. Thank God because some of us were getting really tired of standing after 4 hours especially since this is around 3am in the morning. Although this experience is something I will NEVER want to repeat, it was such a humbling experience and we will probably never ever complain about flying in economy class because we all realized that this is how the Chinese live on a regular basis taking a 10 hour or longer train ride from Beijing to wherever in these less than safe and ideal conditions. These atrocious conditions we experienced would never be allowed in the U.S. in a million years. It also made us realize that even though we didn't speak the same language and only two of the people in our group spoke Mandarin, the Chinese showed their compassion and kindness and either shared or gave up their seats to us. Perhaps a random act of kindness or God watching over us?

So we finally arrived in Inner Mongolia around 9:30am on Sunday morning. We were greeted by friends of the Chinese staff that came with us. They drove us to the hostel where we were staying and we got a quick shower before getting lunch. Afterwards, we headed out to the Gobi desert where we got to ride camels and go sand boarding. Seeing the desert was an amazing thing. The scenery goes on forever and it was absolutely beautiful! We all agreed that the Gobi desert was the best part of this trip.

The following two days, we headed to the grasslands. We stayed in a "Yurt" which is a Mongolian tent or hut. It was actually pretty cool and very well insulated. We took in the scenery of the grasslands that went on for miles. We checked out a local temple and a few people went horseback riding.

Came back to the city part of Inner Mongolia and the next day we checked out the local city scene. Kinda like Beijing, but smaller and with less people.

So here's the part of the story that you won't believe. As we made our way back to the hostel to gather our luggage, I checked our tickets for the sleeper bus ride home. I noticed that the date wasn't correct on our tickets. So we had to high tail it to the train station early hoping to rectify the situation. Luckily, we were able to trade in our tickets for an earlier sleeper bus home that evening. Needless to say, the sleeper bus was a much better situation than the train ride to Inner Mongolia. We were all exhausted after our trip, but we got home safely on Thursday morning around 5:30am.

So despite some traveling woes, we all had a great time in Inner Mongolia, but this is definitely gonna be an experience we'll never forget and something I'm sure we'll all look back on and laugh about.

Today (Sunday) marks one month since we arrived in China. Wow, how time flies! We got our teaching assignments on Friday and I will be teaching a middle level class. We interview the students when they arrive on Monday and depending on their English proficiency, they will be assigned to either a low, middle or high level class. The staff tells us that the middle level classes are the biggest classes so I should expect a full class of about 40 students. We'll have approximately 250 total students for this first session that begins tomorrow. I'm excited and looking foward to things finally getting started!

So I'm sure you're all wondering where are all these photos from the trip to Inner Mongolia? Well the slow 3G internet connection hasn't improved, so while I would love to show you photos from our trip, its gonna have to wait until we get the faster internet hooked up.

Anyways I hope you all enjoy your Labor Day weekend back in the U.S. Enjoy a nice bar-b-que for me. Miss you all and hope all is well with everyone. Take care, talk to ya soon.

Timothy Wong