Urumqi!

My first traveling in China!!

A large group of friends and I traveled 39 hours by train to Urumqi in the Northwest part of China and it was so different than the China that I have come to know! We left by train on a Friday night and didn't get off until Sunday morning. It was so crazy to be on a train for that long! We made two little friends both were little girls around four years old. One was incredibly cute and talked to Jeremy and Laurie for quite a bit and the other girl was quite the little devil and bit Laurie hard enough to leave marks!! Crazy!

We arrived in Urumqi Sunday morning and headed straight to our hostel (my first time in a hostel) which was quite nice! A lot nicer than I had in mind! There we regrouped, showered ( I hadn't showered since Thursday morning!), went to buy some needed items at the store, etc. That night we went and ate a restaurant very close by that was owned by Muslims. So, even the little Chinese that our group could speak didn't really help much. Most of the area that we visited was predominately middle eastern Muslims than Chinese! The language that they spoke was completely different and they used the Aramaic alphabet! I thought that was pretty neat! That day we also went to the street market/ bizarre, there were barely any Chinese people around! All the Weiger people. I bought quite a bit of my Christmas presents there (some I couldnt get on the plane to bring back, but that's another story for later).

Tuesday morning we woke up early and caught a two hour bus south to a city called Turpan. Here in Turpan, there were almost NO Chinese people. I loved it! Everyone spoke very basic simple Chinese. Just like me :) The group broke up and some of us rented bicycles and biked our way out 8 km to an ancient ruins called the Jiahoe Ruins (http://www.chinahighlights.com/xinjiang/turpan/attraction/jiaohe-ruins.htm). It was an amazing abandoned ruins with houses made of stone and mud. There was also a giant buddhist temple there still in quite good shape. On the way biking there we saw donkey carts, little kids playing with random things, grape orchards, huts where people lived, I wish I could remember all the amazing cultural things that we saw! After biking back we caroused the little bazaar that they had there, just looking around. Went back to our hotel (awful hotel) to stay the night. The showers in this hotel were so awful! The showers consisted of these stalls that covered the tiny Asian probably but went from about my knees to the middle part of my chest. These stalls were horribly positioned right in front of a window and when someone opened the door to enter, anyone in the hall would have the opportunity to see you if they just glanced in! It was so awful... oh yes. No hot water.

Wednesday morning we woke up, headed back onto another two hour bus, well they both actually took like three hours. Within the three hour ride we went through mountains with snow covered tops, deserts that stretched forever, and even went to through a large section of wind mills (like the ones in Abilene but not even close to the same size!). We got back to Urumqi and headed from the bus station to eat at a cafe called 'Texas Cafe'. THATS RIGHT! The entire place is decked out with Texas pamphlets, license plates, t-shirts, flags, portraits of the band at UT, they have a ton of English books! You walk in and you feel as if your walking into a cafe back home. It was so comforting! AND they had a western toilet!! (toilets here are like glorified holes in the ground made out of ceramic. you have to squat to do your business!) I order a spinach salad and some waffle fries! It was SOO good. BUT, there was no dr. pepper. Strike one! haha. The owner is a guy from Austin, who sadly flew back home for a vacation and but the manager was there who is a late-twenties guy from Plano! It was just crazy to be all the way across the world and to meet someone from Plano! In a guy's restaurant who's from Austin. After eating we went to a different bus station (the long travel station) on the north side of town, completely middle eastern people, crazy! We got on a sleeper bus at 8pm to head towards Buerjin.

Well, on the way to Beurjin, late Tuesday night early Wednesday morning it's really dark outside our bus stops in the middle of nowhere and we just sit on the road for about twenty minutes. So, Danielle and I both have to use the restroom really bad but there is no where to go!! There was this young Chinese lady looking around for the same reason as us, still nothing to be found. We three pair up to climb over a guard rail, down a concrete embankment, and then down another dusty slippery slope to use the restroom. We three just 'pop-a-squat' right there next to each other and do our business!!! Danielle and I are true Chinese people! About the time we climbed back up the bus was firing up because the traffic jam was letting up. It turns out that there had been a terrible car accident which was blocking the road. A motorized cart was crossing the highway and an SUV hit it. It was a really bad scene. It was hard getting back to sleep for quite a while, my mind kept working over and over about different things. Finally I got back to sleep and woke up in Beurgin which is a really tiny Chinese town that is completely different than any other Chinese city!! It was completely clean! They had bright colored buildings! The light posts had windmills on them so they ran off of the power that they made themselves! They had trashcans IN the sidewalks! You could walk up to the trashcan step on a lever and the lid would pop open and you would drop your trash in. It was raised only about two inches off the ground! It had a little Russian influence! It looked like a really cute, clean, northern American city! Anyways, after getting there we had to get a taxi to take us three hours into the mountains to get to our destination of KANAS LAKE! Kanas Lake is easily the most beautiful place that I have ever been.

Kanas Lake is a turquoise/blue lake tucked away in these snow topped mountains with trees turning yellow and orange from fall! The air was crisp and clean which is almost like air from heaven when your used to dirty Wuhan air! The road to get there was very... OH, I forgot. During the taxi ride up there was fog like I've never seen for before! You couldnt see two feet in front of the car and the road we were on had incredibly sharp turns with mountains on one side and a drop off on the other. It was terrifying at some points in time! Second, the taxi driver was trying to learn some English off of us so he could try to get more English speakers to take his taxi! He knew "hello/good bye/i love you" and the way he said it was priceless! He learned "you take my taxi please", "one person - 50 yuan", and quite a few other things. He was hitting on Laurie the whole trip up there it was quite hilarious.. OH he told her IN ENGLISH, "I'm a bad boy" HAHAHA! Okay... back to Kanas Lake. It's this National Park that is gorgeous and inside of it are these villages of people who now pretty much just work the tourists. The main village is in this awkward stage of still having the old village look with the log cabins, animals in the yard, etc but now they're trying to make it touristy and they are putting up these fancy buildings everywhere and they have buses that run all during the day into the night time. It's really sad to see this absolutely amazing breath-taking place being turned into a tourist-trap. We probably got to go while it was still beautiful and untouched! We spent the night in this random woman's yurt which is like a large tepee! You officially can't stay in them, but Danielle, Jeremy, Laurie and I ran across one while walking through the forest and Laurie walked up to the house next to it and knocked on every door until someone answered and she just asked if we could stay there! And we did! We had a wood-burning stove (made more for cooking than staying warm) but it went out before midnight leaving us in freezing weather with just barely enough covers to cover our bodies!! We watched the sunset over the mountains and the stars were absolutely beautiful!! The stars stretched from one set of mountains on one side all the way to the other side, no clouds! There looked like there were a billion stars! It was gorgeous!

Thursday morning we packed up our stuff, walked along the lake and rivers once more, ate some lunch in a near by log cabin, and headed out to catch a taxi back to the nearest town three hours away. Instead of a taxi, we got on a mini-bus with all people from Taiwan whose English was wonderful! After we got back to Buerjin, we had some dumplings at a tiny hole-in-the-wall place. They were pretty good but we failed to notice til the end that they had an inspection notice on the wall stating they failed their last inspection and there was a huge sad face on it! It funny! We left and headed to the bus station (right across the street) and got on our sleeper bus back to Urumqi!

15 hours later Friday morning we find ourselves back in Urumqi and we headed straight for the airport to catch our flight back home to Wuhan! We get through the first line to get our tickets, our bags get checked.. PROBLEM #1. Danielle and I weren't allowed to take the decorative/ traditional chinese knives that we bought onto the plane, even in our checked baggage! I bought three for Nathan, my brother-in-law, and father. They were worth quite a bit and I just had to get rid of them.... boo. So, we get over it and get in line to go through security... PROBLEM #2. Daniel and I left our passports with our boss so he could get our residents permits. He told us we would be fine with a copy of our passport and some other paperwork we had, which you had to have a passport to get. (He also didn't know we would be flying back) SOOO we try to go through security and NO! They won't let us through!! We ended up having to pull our luggage off the plane right before it takes off, and stay in Urumqi for TWO MORE DAYS! So, to treat ourselves, we went back to the Texas Cafe where I had a hamburger (didn't taste anything like I would have wanted it to.. boo) Back to the first hostel, back to the bazaar to replace the Christmas presents that I had to throw away! Our boss over-nighted our passports to our hostel, which we were really unsure would get to us through Chinese mail! Blah, Blah, Blah after paying 74.3% of my salary for the month, I finally got a plane ride home! Sunday night.... HOME IN WUHAN!!

I left so much out... I will post the stories that I remember randomly when I remember :)