We got up at 7:30 to eat get ready and eat breakfast. We met Joe downstairs at 8:30 and headed to the train station. I, however, was not ready to leave. The prospect of returning to Shanghai with two months of class left and only a 3 day travel weekend to look forward to didn't hold great promise for me. There is a tour that goes through Tibet, down to Nepal, and then over to India that I would like to do some day in the future. Perhaps after law school :) We got to the train station at 8:45, said goodbye to Joe and Mr. Huang, and entered the station. We waited for about 45 minutes and then boarded the train at 9:30. At first we thought we had the compartment to ourselves, Selina had a bottom bunk and I was in a top bunk, but at the last minute an old Chinese couple came into our compartment. They caused us to constantly worry for two reasons. Number one, the man had a severe cough that made it sound like he was drowning in his lungs. This cough made solid sleep very difficult for the next two days. The first night I found myself laughing in my bunk because every time I was about to fall asleep he would start coughing again. I could hear Selina below me and she was having a hard sleeping as well. Number two, the woman was on the other top bunk and was too short to really reach the foot holds when she was getting down. She had to turn backwards when she got down and I was so scared that she was going to fall every time. However, she was very sweet and kept offering us food because she didn't think we were eating enough. I think she found the two us very entertaining because when we got off the train for our stretching breaks she laughed at all of our shenanigans. Her husband also laughed at us on the train because we would talk by me bending over the side of the bunk and we would hand each other snacks by waving it around until the other saw the waving hand and took it. Overall, they were very nice and made the trip very interesting.
I wish I could tell you that there was a great murder mystery on the train and that we were all gathered into the dining car and individually questioned by the police inspector only to discover that it was Miss Scarlet in the kitchen with the candlestick but, alas, it was relatively uneventful. I finally finished "The Stand" and also read "The Invisible Man" and "The Time Machine." The TVs in our compartments worked this time and I watched Forrest Gump and Harry Potter 3 which were both dubbed in Chinese but I've seen both of them so many times I didn't need the sound to know what was going on, and sometimes what was being said. On Friday night Selina and I went outside our compartment and pretended to trick or treat outside each compartment door. We had bought some Dove chocolates in Lhasa and used those as the candy. We had a great time celebrating our Halloween on the train. We went back into the compartment and took pictures with the night vision on my camera to add to the creepiness factor. This train ride seemed longer than the last one because we didn't have anything to look forward to, just class and homework.
We got back to Shanghai at 12:30 and got a cab back to Tonghe. We dropped off our stuff and headed down to Hannah's for a real breakfast and then came back up for a shower. You don't really appreciate a good shower until you've spent two days on a train without one!!! I would probably need to take two to feel truly clean again :) I decided to start uploading pictures for everyone and typing up my journal notes. I was walking through my room to my bed and there, next to my closet, were my tennis shoes. Right at that moment this amazing journey came to an end. I have tried to describe it to you the best that I can but the over all influence this trip has had upon me is something I will never be able to fully describe :)
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