Home is behind, the world ahead

Chenzhou was fabulous, but it wasn't because of the dusty scenery or the noodles.

Viviane

Michelle
Claire

It was because of my great

friends.

Himbo

Beth

The trip from Changsha to Chenzhou began early in the AM on Friday (Oct. 17th). Like...6:30 in the morning early. The girls, Beth and I met Himbo at the train station. Himbo is another english teacher at Changsha Medical University. He's 23 and was the reigning youngest teacher on campus until I came on board. I stole the title ^___^. I feel honored in a "Drat, I'm the baby again" kinda way.

The train ride was roughly 5 hours long. We passed the time well enough by listening to music, talking and generally getting to know each other. Honestly, we'd basically just met Himbo that morning, and Beth and I hadn't spent much time with the girls outside of practice until now though I had had dinner with them once. It was an enjoyable trip, but we were all very ready to get off the train once we arrived in Chenzhou. Very ready. Ugh.

For the record, hard seats aren't so bad, but I wouldn't recommend booking hard seats on a train for a ride more than 5 hours or so.


Once we got out of the Chenzhou train station, we immediately looked for a place to have lunch. After much searching and the occasional wrong turn, we found a little shop and got some hot pot Then we went about finding our way to the university.











Xiangnan University is quite pretty. In this picture, it honestly looks like a fake backdrop. By the way, Himbo, the picture looks a little blurry. Maybe next time you should hold the camera a bit steadier! ^__^ I kid I kid. So, the place has a music building! I was in love with it. We spent the majority of our time at the university somewhere in the vicinity of the music building. The conest itself was held in the concert auditorium, and I was quite proud to realize I could read some of the posters on the walls about past concerts. Yay! The campus also has a nice looking lake (entirely manmade it looks like), with a little walking bridge and everything. Really cute. The biggest plus was that it was all...ya know...fully built. Nice change from the fact that all of China is under construction. (No joke, I swear)

(Urgh...I hate having pictures taken of me, but Viviane looks adorable!)

The competition took all of Saturday and all of Sunday morning. The only topic these kids had was "1+1=2". Not kidding. They had to write speeches and answer questions about this topic. Our girls had fabulous speeches, in my opinion, and they did so well! I have clips of all of their speeches. Unfortunately, I don't have enough room to post all three speeches here, so I'm posting Viviane's for now because it fits in the limited space I have. I also don't have their speeches in full, but you guys still get the point. I'm so proud of them for getting on that stage and doing so great! The judges were crackpots, in all seriousness. The questions for the speeches were ridiculous, and everyone agrees that the judging system was rigged. I was told by some Chinese teachers from other universities in Hunan, that the judging is always stupid every year. No one understands how the final grades can be given. Whatever. Although our team didn't win, they did a fabulous job, and should be commended!




Another plus of this trip was the nice hotel and 3 free meals a day! Although it's not in my habit to eat very much, I still appreciate food I don't have to pay for! And it was tasty too! It was also fun to have group meals for a change. Usually I've been eating/cooking for myself, and well let's face it. That gets really lame and boring and lonely really fast. I mean I go out with friends frequently, but sometimes people are busy, or I'm busy or too tired(lazy) to go out anywhere.



(From left to right: Himbo at top, Beth, Viviane, Michelle, Claire. I'm taking the picture obviously.) XD

Poor Viviane thought most of the food was too spicy. She doesn't really care for spicy food unlike...well...the rest of us! ^___^


The weekend was of full of speeches, food and attempts to stay awake in the auditorium (everyone had issues with this!).




One of our joint attempts resulted in this portrait of me surrounded by random flowers. I had started doodling flowers in my notebook and Michelle decided to draw a picture of me. I was smiling the whole time, but she didn't draw a smile! Oh well ^___^ She's a very talented artist! My flowers are hideously kindergartener-ish LOL. Also, forgive the bad scan. I don't know how to use scanners?







The return trip was hilariously entertaining. We got on the train, Claire and Himbo were going to sit across the aisle from the rest of us, but there were people in their (assigned) seats. One man was sitting in Himbo's seat, while another man was sitting in some random lady's seat across from the 1st man. Himbo and Claire argued a bit, but the men pretended they didn't hear them! They sat there and acted like nobody was talking to them!


Then the guards came and argued a bit, and the men did the same thing to them! Oh then there was screaming, and commentary from the other passengers. The men finally said something like "we just wanted to sit for 10 minutes". What? Lamest excuse ever! Finally, the guards kicked them out of the seats so that
our people could sit down. After that the ride was rather peaceful. Himbo got sandwhiched between Claire and another nameless girl...






While Viviane, Michelle and I shared music and played the language game! The language game involves translating random things from english to chinese and back again. Then we started in on Japanese and it was chaos after that. Heh.)



To say the least, we were dog tired by the time we got back to Changsha. We left Himbo and Viviane in town, because they were going in other directions. So, Claire, Michelle, Beth and I met the driver from our school, and he drove us back to the university. We all promptly crashed after that.

So, my little weekend getaway was hectic, exhausting and a whole bunch'a crazy fun. I even practiced some Chinese. XD woot.