Oct. 4- Silk Road Journey Comes To An End

We got to sleep in again on Saturday which was great because we didn't leave until 11. We ate breakfast, got our bags packed with a little difficulty, and headed down to the bus hoping that we didn't forget anything. We went to a new museum in Urumqi which had 4 exhibits. I found myself bothered by the art gallery the most because of the scenic paintings. They had beautiful landscapes but then in the background there were bulldozers and factories. It wasn't in a bad way though, it was glorifying the worker and industrialization and I was very unnerved by it. Ryan ran into me in the gallery and said how he was bothered by it too. In that museum and ever since I came to China I realized how incredibly ignorant I was about the influence that Mao and the Communist party had on China. In the states people talk about it and it's touched on in certain classes but until you come here you don't realize how huge it was. It's one of the rare times in my life when I felt truly ignorant about something. It was pretty humbling and made me think that maybe my parents are right and I don't know everything after all :) And to think Mao did all of that without finishing middle school...

After the museum we were given 2 and a half hours to walk around a bazaar that sold a lot of touristy stuff. We ate some local Weegor cuisine, lamb ribs and a superb rice dish, and then shopped for the rest of the time. I got a couple really cool scarves and I'm pretty sure I got ripped off on them but I'm a terrible haggler. I'm too passive and too lazy to get into a long haggling bout every time I buy something. We met the rest of the group at 4:30 for dinner and then we drove to the airport to get on the plane. Our plane left at 8:30 pm and landed in Shanghai at 12:30 am. It was raining and when we got our bags they were soaking wet. It was a 5 minute walk to our bus and then a one hour ride back to the apartments because they closed down part of the highway. Selina and I were worried about having to stop at every floor in the elevator on the way up and we when realized we were the first ones off the bus we grabbed our bags and began to run, actually it was more of an awkward waddle, ahead of the group and got an elevator all to ourselves. I was laughing so hard in my delirious state I had a hard time running and not toppling over. Ruby was up when we got back and she was so surprised at how far we went on the trip. We ended up going to bed around 3 am.

Overall this trip was the most amazing traveling adventure I've ever done. We went to places that people have never even heard of and went all the way across China by bus and train. At the end of our journey all I wanted to do was keep going and going all across Asia and then continue on somewhere else. It's made me realize that I want to go to as many places as possible and not to do it all by plane and fancy hotel. It's definitely a lot more genuine when other means of transportation are being used. Maybe not as fast, but it adds something that speed takes away.