马马虎虎

Since our classes were indeed cancelled on Friday Zack, Elizabeth, and I decided to go to Wuhan on a whim, just because we had the chance. I’m somewhat disappointed—though not surprised—that I wasn’t given more warning that I would have a five-day weekend (I never have classes on Monday or Tuesdays); I would have gone to Beijing or Enshi or somewhere exciting. I actually was informed the night before officially, unlike Zack and Elizabeth who received a text message at 6:45am saying, “No classes today, have a good day off.” I would have replied a bit sarcastically, thank goodness I wasn’t the recipient of such timely news.

Evidence of what a thorough planner I am will surface in a moment. We met at 7:30 to catch a taxi for our 8 o’clock bus only to be frustrated by the lack of taxis driving down Da Xue Luo early in the morning and by the time we got a poor fellow to pick us up we were frantically trying to communicate to him that we needed to boogey. I’m shouting “step on it” in English as if that will help. Zack, being the resident Chinese expert, told him that our bus left at 8 and he finally put the pedal to the metal. We quite literally threw a 10yuan bill at him as we sprinted toward our bus with about 10 seconds to spare. Once we were safely seated we breathed deeply and prepared to enjoy the roomy backseat left open for us. Zack and I had a conversation about how enjoyable it is to be on a bus. You are relieved from the pressures of feeling like you ought to be doing something. You are absolutely free to gaze through the dirt, out the window at the triangle hats that hide farmers knee deep in the rice paddies. You don’t need to feel the least bit guilty about reading a book for four hours, or writing to your sister as I happened to be doing (although I did a bit of all three). About an hour later we were completely rethinking the aforementioned description of “enjoyable.”

Our bus stopped and people started trickling off. I assumed we had stopped for a potty break. Soon, though, it became apparent that we were the only people staying on the bus. Not only was everyone exiting, but they were carrying all of their belongings with them. In China, when everybody else does something, it’s safe to assume that they’re all obeying instructions. The wise course of action is to copy them if you don’t understand a word, as in our case. So we load up our bags and stand outside. And stand. And stand. Roughly half an hour later another bus pulls up and our fellow passengers formed the usual “line” to get on. I held back at first, thinking the people who were already on that bus would need to get off. Oh how I regret that mistake! Since we were a little slow in joining the rush we didn’t have much of a choice in seats on an already crowded bus. That meant that Zack and Elizabeth got zero leg room behind two ladies who exercised their right to leaning the seats all the way back. While I—the one with short legs—had plenty of leg room but got squished between Zack and some guy who was apparently afraid of water judging by his smell.

After a very adventurous ride we made it to WuChang and I begin calling all the people I know who live in Wuhan to try to find a place to stay the night. You may think it was a bit crazy of me to head to a city and not even have sleeping arrangements made. And I would tend to agree. It wasn’t that I didn’t put any effort toward that tiny bit of planning, but none of my efforts had been rewarded hitherto. Katera and Lucy happened to be on their way to Hong Kong when I called them. Thankfully the second or third time I called David and Katie they answered and had room in their apartment and no plans for the weekend. Recklessness doesn’t always end in disaster, as we managed to find accommodations and make it alive to every destination we desired. It was an event-filled weekend that I could tell many more stories about, but since this post is already verging on ridiculous in length, I’ll end the story there. If you want to hear more ask.

Today I went over to Brad’s apartment and was surprised to find four people from Wuhan, one of them being a good friend Tara! She was next on my list of people to call if we still hadn’t found a place to rest our heads. I would have been pretty shocked to hear that she was in YiChang while I was in Wuhan. I’m a bit disappointed that I didn’t know they were coming, because I would have loved to have spent time with them but maybe next time…

We went to the Indian cafeteria for lunch where I got to try eating Indian food with my hands for the first time. It was exquisite as Brad so appropriately described. I enjoyed the meal immensely. Later I went to the guo mao to stock up on groceries only to discover that butter has undeniably vanished! Brad had warned me that they couldn’t find it but I had been holding my hopes high that maybe it was just hidden somewhere. Perhaps they rearranged the store like they regularly do and it got covered by drinkable yogurt or questionable meat products. After a reasonably meticulous search I’ve resigned myself to the fact that it may indeed be gone. I really don’t know how to survive without butter in this town.

"It's extraordinary to me that the United States can find $700 billion to save Wall Street and the entire G8 can't find $25 billion dollars to saved 25,000 children who die every day from preventable diseases."

-Bono