(No Subject)‏

Hi,

My trip home from Bahamas was fine as far as my ticket to Shanghai went. The airline staff were great. I had seconds every meal and the drinks were free. I slept a lot. After that it was a nightmare. I arrived in Shanghai about 3pm on Wednesday as scheduled. After that it was improvising all of the way. The high speed Maglev was out of service. Great! So how do I get to Shanghai? After searching for an hour I found a bus that would get me to the train staion. The Maglev takes 6 minutes. So, right away, I knew it was going to be a tough journey. 'A hard days night' as the Beatles would say. So I am already 2 hours behind schedule. When I get to the train station every ticket is sold out. This is Chinese New Year! 10,000's of people are around. I buy a bus ticket from a scalper for almost three times the price so I can get to Nanjing. He wanted 5X but I got him down some. The bus left at 6:30pm. I get to Nanjing about 10pm and there is no way to get out of there to go Ma'anshan. The lineups are so long that it would take me more than an hour to get to the wicket and then I would expect that there are no train tickets to Ma'anshan. So what do I do? Sleep on the floor again? No. I don't want to do that. I have cash. A guy offered to take me there for 300rmb. The normal fee is 20rmb per person with 3 people. Supply and demand. I paid him 150. I didn't want to spend another night sleeping on the floor of Nanjing train station. It was comical. You need to laugh in these situations. When he approached me first it was 300; we argued in our limited Chinese and English. I would have slept on the floor for 300. So 150 is not so bad. But he wasn't even a legal taxi. Anyway we worked out a deal where he would get 50 and the real taxi got 100. And this guy was driving a BMW! He drove me for about 15 minutes to meet the Ma'anshan taxi at Zhonghuamen bus station and then he would go back to the train station to pick up another desperate traveler. Opporunity knocks and you cash in. It was comical at one point because his wife was with him and she made sure that he got a good deal. She did most of the haggling with the real taxi. I didn't care, I just wanted to get home.

My phone didn't work when I arrived in China. I couldn't call Lydia. Oh no. How am I going to find her and get my key? I found a public phone in Shanghai bus station. There are phone booths here but you need a phone car or credit card to use them. Other places have public phones that you can use and you pay after the call. I called Lydia to tell her that I was coming but I didn't know if I would make it home that night or the next morning. I wanted to be sure that we could hook up somehow. I needed to get my key or I would be sleeping outside my door.

After much scrambling I got home at midnight. What a nice welcome home! She had 5 dishes cooked for me but they were all cold obviously. I said that first I need a shower and then I will eat. She heated the food while I was showering. Great shower! She had the place spotless and had even washed the few dirty clothes that I had left behind. And I had so much food placed in front of me that I could only eat a little. Enough for 4 people! I had told her one time that I have cooked for her often and I would like her to cook sometime. So she did. She thought that I didn't like her cooking but it was very good. I told her when I left to water my plants and to eat the food in the fridge because it would go bad. She soaked my plants! And she filled my fridge with food. Maybe it got lost in the translation! haha I tease her all of the time. She is that kind of girl that you just want to tease. Naive, eager, pleasant, fun. Her English is excellent. She has good vocabulary; but she uses big words in the wrong context sometimes (isn't that spoonerism? anyway Victor Borge used to do that and it was so funny!)or she mispronouces words so that I am confused. Repeat that, please. Oh you mean this! Like she said that I am confidential. Confidential? Well, maybe. Then I figured out that she meant confident. Most English students use a smaller vocabulary so that even if they misprounce something I understand what they are saying.

She left about 1am. I was awake until about 4am. It will take me a few days to readjust. The trip from Shanghai to here was not pleasant. When you have 5 or 6 guys/girls all talking around you and you are trying to negotiate the best deal AND you are tired it is not a good feeling. But it is a good feeling to walk in the door and see dinner on the table. She is a good kid.

I don't know what she wants. But I hope she gets it.

I will send pics home soon. That was the longest that I have ever spent in going from point A to point B. I woke up at 8am EST (9pm in China) in Bahamas on Monday and I arrived home at midnight Wed China time. 51 hours later. But I thoroughly enjoyed my visit. It was so nice to see all of my family without spouses or children. And I would do it again but give me a month to recover!

Don