We had to leave our apartment early on Saturday morning, December 13, 2014. We were leaving at 6:30 am, so I had to be up at 5:30 in order to get ready to go. You know shower, put on my make-up, pack, things like that. Those who know me know that I am not a morning person, so this was very difficult. Even though I was very excited to go on my first trip on a high speed train and our first trip outside of Qingdao, I did not want to get up that early in the morning. I did manage to pull myself out of bed and was on the shuttle bus by 6:30 am.
The bus drove us to the Qingdao train station. This is me in the train station. The person to the left of me with the long black hair and the red scarf is our Waiban, Joyce. She takes care of us. She helped us get our work visas, our bank accounts and anything else we need to do. She is the best. She organized this trip for all of the foreign teachers. She is the best!
This is our gate and platform. We had to go down some stairs, under the train tracks and back up to get to our platform.
This is me on the train. Gary put this one also up, but this I wanted to put in on too. Gary was so nice to let me sit by the window on the way there even though he was even more excited to be on the train. I loved the train because you could get up and wander around. Gary and I went up to the next train car to visit our Chinese friends and their kids. There were 6 people from the Foreign Affairs office who went with us. Each of them brought their child or spouse with them. It was fun to get to know their families. Gary and I spent most of our time with them. We love to spend our time with our Chinese or Korean friends more than we spend with our American acquaintances. We feel closer to them. Even in our branch, we spend most of our time with our Korean friends.
The train goes really fast. It was surprising how you don't feel the speed. The train did not wiggle as much as I thought it would. The ride was so smooth. When we were standing in the train station to come back to Qingdao, a couple of high speed trains came through the station at almost top speed. You could then feel how fast the trains actually go, but when you are actually on it, you don't feel the speed. I was able to read and play games, play with friends and actually look at the scenery. You would think at this speed you would not be able to see much of the scenery, but you can see surprisingly a lot. It was a fun trip. It took about 4 hours.
This was the train station in Zouzhong. We arrived here and took a bus to Taierzhuang. On the way to Taierzhuang, we stopped at a hotel and had a very nice lunch.We had to drive for about 1.5 hours to get to Taierzhuang. I kind of look disgusted, but the sun was very bright. Even with my sunglasses, the glare hurts my eyes.
Our first stop was to the Taierzhuang War Museum. This is me in front of the museum. I had read up on the Battle of Taierzhuang before we went just to make sure I would enjoy my time there. The Chinese were able to win a battle against greater odds. The Japanese had more men and a lot more equipment, but the Chinese were able to defeat them with the help of the residents of Taierzhuang. It is a very interesting part of Chinese history. If you like history, I would read about it. Lizzie may have learned about it in one of her Chinese history classes at UNLV.
This is actually one of the walls from the city that they found and preserved in the museum. All the bullet holes were very interesting.
This is our hotel in the heart of the Ancient City of Taierzhuang. This is a 5 star hotel. The average room cost is 1700 yuan or almost $300. The school got us a room with a king-sized bed and a big tub under the window in the room. Gary and I were both able to take a bath which we have not been able to do since we arrived in China. It was nice, but not as nice as I thought it would be. I was thinking it was going to be just so wonderful, but I guess I am just so used to only taking a shower that a soak in the bath does not mean that much to me anymore. The room was beautiful.
The only problem was that there was no heater in the room. Most places in China do not have central heating, so you have to use the air conditioning unit as a heater (which it does). However, it does not get very warm. It only got up to about 58 degrees in the room, so the night was cold. The morning was really cold. We could see our breath.
The whole city was amazing. The old buildings were beautiful and elegant. The carvings were amazing. However, I think I liked the bridges the most. There were so many because canals run through the entire Ancient City. Below are pictures of many of the bridges we saw or crossed over. There were probably many we did not get to see.
This was early Sunday morning and I was very cold.
On the steps of this bridge there were beautiful carvings. Again amazing.
The city has a wall that went around it during the time of the war. They have rebuilt some of it and we were able to go walk along it. It is an amazing wall. We only walked along part of it. I wanted to walk along the rest of it, but we were afraid we would not be able to see the rest of the city.
We all met for lunch before we took a nap or relaxed and got on the bus to head back to the train station. Gary and I sat with our friends and their kids. They were being silly with Gary and eating some sugar art they bought. I talked about sugar art in an earlier post about the food festival.
The kids were always happy to see us.
So this is my friend, Shirley and another friend (I can't remember her name). Well they were making Chinese pancakes using the red and green hot peppers. It was just a joke at first, but then they ended up eating it. We were joking with them that it would be so hot. They both laughed. They did fine while they were eating them, but after their mouths got very hot. They convinced me to do it, too. I gave into peer pressure and did it too. It actually was not as bad as I thought it would be. It was hot, but not as hot as many of the things I have eaten before. It was such a fun lunch!
After lunch we took the 1.5 hour bus drive to the train station, boarded a train back to Qingdao. We left at 5 pm and got in around 9 pm. It still took us a bit to get back to our apartment, so it was almost 10 when we arrived back at our apartment. It was such a fun trip for me. I enjoyed myself immensely. I can't wait for our trip to Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Hong Kong at the end of January.
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