When traveling alone, you learn a lot about yourself. I have learned my right armpit sweats much more than my left.
My mother purchased me a money belt so my passport wouldn't get stolen. It's like a small black fanny pack that goes around your neck and under your shirt and one of your arms. I, stupidly, put my money belt under my right armpit.
After landing in Shanghai and grabbing my two unbelievably heavy carry on bags, I began to make my trek from the Shanghai Airport to the Shanghai train station. This trek can be made entirely underground, there is a passage way connecting the two landmarks, but it mush have taken me half an hour. I had to continually make little twirls, switching from pulling the bags from my right arm to my left arm and than back again. I had balanced the bigger, heavier on top of the smaller rolling bag, and it continued to fall and I would have to stop to readjust everything.
By the time I made it to the Shanghai train station, I was sweating bullets and my arms were very tired. I already felt like I was ready to cry. The school had already purchased a ticket for me and sent me a photo of the confirmation, so I walked up to the nearest ticket booth with my phone ready to grab my ticket.
"Passport?" asked the young man behind the counter. I lifted my shirt, flashing my right nipple as I pulled the passport out of my money belt. The young man stared at my passport, then he stared at the photo on my phone. Then he stared at my passport again. He typed something on the computer, looked at my passport and then walked away from the counter. A few minutes later, he walked back and typed something on the computer again. Then he looked at my phone. Then the passport again. The young man began to frantically point down toward another line. "I'm supposed to be in that line?" The young man nodded. I made my was down to the line I thought he was pointing at.
"Passport?" asked the middle aged woman behind the counter. I again flashed my right nipple as I hurriedly tried to grab my passport. The woman looked at my phone, looked at my passport, and typed something on the computer. "You have the wrong passport number on your ticket, I will have to refund you and you will have to buy another ticket." I try to explain to her that I didn't buy the initial ticket, but it's too late, she's already moved on to another customer. So I walk down the train station to the next ticket booth.
"Passport?" says the woman whose probably in her mid thirties. I show her my nipple. "No, this is the wrong line, you want to be in that line way over there." I sigh and begin to walk again.
It's at this point I notice no one else in the train station is sweating. My sweat keeps falling in my eyes, which really stings, and everyone else is just going about their days. My passport has started to lose it's shape because all of the sweat from my right armpit is pooling in the money belt. I don't know why I'm still putting the visa back in there, but I still am.
"Passport?" says whoever is behind the counter, at this point I can no longer discern gender or age. I flash my nip and pay for my ticket. My train is obviously way back at the front of the station, so I have to trek all the way back across yet again.
I have an hour to kill so I stop and grab some lunch at the restaurant at the train station that looks the most Chinese. I order the pork loins and rice and what I think might be an exotic orange drink that turns out to just be disgustingly sweet orange soda. Those little peanut looking things seemed to be hard boiled eggs from a very small bird. And the pork loins are potent. Very, very potent. The only thing I really like was that green kim chee stuff, which was really really good. I wish I had just had a big plate of that.
The lunch did its job though. Both my breathing and my sweating seemed to slow down. I felt human again, although I still felt a little dehydrated. I grabbed a watermelon flavored water and went headed for my train. When I first tasted it, I thought that watermelon flavored water was the most delicious thing I had ever tasted. By the end of the bottle, I thought it was disgusting. It reminded me of that cucumber lime Gatorade, not in flavor, just in the experience of you think you like it and you keep drinking it and then you realize its disgusting.
I read before my trip that burping and farting were not considered rude in China, but I did not notice anyone on the train burping and farting except for me. The combination of pork loin and watermelon flavored burps is something that will haunt me for the rest of my days.
The train ride was beautiful. I starred out the window the entire trip. There were rolling hills covered in trees, lakes and rives, tall apartment buildings and disheveled old houses. It seems like all building in China are painted brown but a lot of the architecture is truly unique. If you look up at the mountains in the distance, you can often see temples sitting atop. There was even a giant golden statue 100 feet tall, although as we got closer to that it turned out to be part of a roller coaster. The bullet train moves very quickly and when we first started it was raining, so the streams of water rushed across the windows, like billions of little sperms racing towards an egg in one of those old sex ed videos. Each time a bullet train raced past going the other direction, I would get scared and flinch. When we flew past other train stations, men would stand in packs smoking their cigarettes. I have not seen a woman smoke here yet.
"Next stop, Nanjing," I thought I heard over the loud speaker. It turns out he had said Danyung, but I only realized that after getting off the train and wandering around outside for ten minutes while denying all the taxi drivers. Remember, this whole time I am still twirling constantly because my arms are getting very very tired and the sweat has started up again and kicked into full gear. This also meant I had to buy another train ticket and get back on the train, which meant I had to show one more Chinese train worker my right nipple.
I arrived at the Nanjing train station 30 minutes late, but Josie and Peter didn't seem to mind at all. Although they spoke very little English, they were both very nice to me as they informed me that it was going to be an hour long drive to the hotel I would be staying at tonight. During that car ride, I felt like my brain had stopped working all together. There were fruit vendors selling fruit on the side of the freeway, we drove over a giant lake on a 10 km bridge, but my body was just doing everything it could to not immediately fall asleep in front of my hosts. When we finally got to the hotel and they said they couldn't take me because I didn't have a Chinese ID, I barely noticed. It wouldn't have seemed right if I had gotten into the first hotel we looked at after the day I just had. Of course, Josie and Peter found another hotel that seems much nicer than where I stayed in Beijing and told me I could take the night to rest before checking out the school tomorrow which I was very grateful for because my right armpit and I were in desperate need for a show. And, thank god, this bathrooms shower was separate from it's toilet.
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