Train Trip!

Got up and tried to pack most of our stuff to get ready for our trip to Xi'an. We went to church (about 10 minutes from the apartment). It's called International Fellowship? As our taxi was getting there, we happened upon a wreck, a bad one. It looked like a car hit a bicycle. The car had a smashed windshield. Bad. We sat down at church and looked around and saw most of our other Tianjin group!! YAY!!! The music was good but the guest speaker was like a professor. He read his sermon and it was very technical. So I reseted my eyes a little. Afterwards we reunited with the others and decided to go to lunch....with 18 white people....in China. BIG group! We got a lot of stares. After walking around a bit we actually decided on McDonalds and KFC. Very good. Had a peach soda with ice cream in it. (2 actually...it was really hot!!!). Tom's group took a taxi back to the apartment and packed the rest of our stuff. We also took a little nap. We decided to pack an overnight bag and leave our big baggage at the Beijing hotel we are staying at starting on Wednesday. It's gonna be nice...

We took the 5:00 bus to Beijing because the train was cancelled. Oh boy! Then we grabbed a taxi to the hotel, dropped our baggage, then rode the subway to the train station. We made the train by maybe 10 minutes. It was crazy!!! The station was huge and there were people everywhere... We got a car called a hard sleeper which consists of 6 bunk beds: 3 on each side. Mark and I were on the top two. That was fun. Before concking out we ate in the dining car before it closed. Fran and I weren't feeling well and so the chicken and rice we had was really really good (too many fried octopus the night before!!) By this time it was almost 10:30pm. Mark and I climbed the bunks and went to sleep. There were four men sleeping underneath us. There are no doors to the sleeper cabs. It's just open. Sleeping on the train wasn't that bad actually! Not wonderful but I slept. I also listened to my iPod to help me sleep and had to get up at 4am to use the restroom...thank goodness I put my shoes on! The toliets are squatty potties!