Panda by Day, Party by Night: A Weekend in Chengdu and a homestay

Friday afternoon, Martha, Margaux, Ricki, Jean-Raphael, and I went to Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province and about 2 hrs by bus from Mianyang where I'm teaching. We took the train, which was hot and crowded- not nearly as nice as the trains leaving from Shanghai that I took last year. And the train randomly stopped twice so I think the bus might have been better. I took the bus last week when I travelled to Hong Kong. Then we took a 1 hr bus ride through Chengdu to get to the hostel and then had to walk awhile (basically public transportation wasn't really the most efficient in this case).

The hostel was nice. The 5 of us got split up into three different rooms, which was kinda annoying but not really a big deal. They had western toilets and hot showers and coffee so we were happy. The first night, we went to a tex mex restaurant, which was exciting. They even had margaritas! And it was pretty delicious, despite being mexican food in China.

From left: JR, Martha, Ricki

Then we went to a bar with cheap drinks, where we met some people who Margaux knows. After talking with them for awhile, I realized one of them actually is best friends with two of my best friends from Shanghai! They all go to the same college in the US! small world!

Martha and I at the bar

The next morning we got up early and had a western breakfast at the hostel, muesli and fruit with coffee. So nice. Then we boarded a bus to go see the pandas!!! It took about an hr to get there and was organized through our hostel, which made things really nice and easy. We saw some pandas but it was dark and rainy so my pics aren't that good :(

panda in the dark, they aren't as scary as they look here

The pandas were quite active though and really really quite. We also got to see red pandas, they look more like foxes.

red panda

The rain started coming down really hard so we had to hide out for awhile, and then we saw more pandas.

Ricki, JR, Me, and Martha hanging out by the red panda observation area

pandas up close. Don't worry, they're not normally in cages

JR, Me, Ricki, and Martha being pandas while we waited for the rain to stop

We watched a funny video about pandas, and then returned to our hostel. We were famished so we immediately went to lunch on this cool, but touristy shopping street called JinLi. They had tons of stalls of food- noodles, buns, dumplings, meat on a stick, egg tarts, bubble tea, soup, etc. It was great. We tried and shared lots of different things and were pretty full afterwards. My fav were some spicy noodles I had, which Ricki got in the eye and thought she was going to be blind for life. But she's not, so no worries. Then we shopped around for a bit and I bought an amazing panda hat complete with arms and paws. I've been eyeing amazing panda gear now since my first trip to China two years ago so I figured it was time to finally make the investment. I'm very pleased with my purchase :)

Hello Halloween 2011

Then we went back to the hostel and took a nap, then had dinner at a Tibetan Restaurant. Chengdu is relatively close to Tibet so there's a large Tibetan community there. We had yak dumplings, yak yogurt, steamed bread, and some dumplings (Mo Mo) filled with buttery mashed potatoes, like actually. so good. That night we played cards at the hostel bar, and then went dancing. Mianyang has NO nightlife so this was a big treat for us. And the club had free drinks for ladies all night- yay! I know it's reverse discrimination, but it's nice. haha.

Ricki, Margaux, Martha, and I at the club

Ricki and I at the hostel 

The next morning we had more western breakfast and coffee, and then got on the train home. On this train, the seats were just benches stacked on top of each other and the seat numbers were all messed up. But in the end, it actually was more comfortable than the train there and it wasn't delayed at all. The chinese people sitting across from us were very nice and gave us homemade steamed buns they made and asked us lots of questions. They even tried to tell us jokes about Obama, which didn't translate very well, but were funny (all of this in chinese). That's why I love China, people are so unnecessarily friendly, it's great.

our seats on the train

Unfortunately after returning from Chengdu, we had to straight to our homestays. I loved my last homestay, but they switched us all up for some reason so we all had different families from last time. I was with a girl named Ruby, who was very nice, but terribly boring and didn't have anything to say. And when she did, it took her forever to say it, which I should be sympathetic about, but it's really quite annoying. We went to her house and read for awhile (I've been flying through books here), then we ate dinner, which was good. Then we watched TV, of course. The next morning she woke me up at 8:30am, then we watched TV for literally 4 hours. I was so bored. It's not like I can even understand it. And random people kept coming over, but were never introduced and then they'd leave. Breakfast was good though. We had milk, a hard-boiled egg, and some steamed buns, plus some crispy greasy bread. For lunch we had dried pig brains and heart, which I ate unknowingly, ewwww. Then we walked forever to a sports gym to play ping pong in the sweltering heat, only to find out that it was closed for the next 2 hrs for a lunch break. (Everyone in China takes long lunch breaks and naps for awhile in the afternoon) So we went to a tea house and I was so bored so I read some NYtimes on my iphone and then took a nap while Ruby and her friend Megan giggled and watched TV. And it was super gross at the tea house cuz there were lots of men smoking. We finally played ping pong, which was fun for awhile, but it was so hot in the gym so we went home after an hr, watched some TV, and then ate dinner.

I got home around 7:30pm to the palace, only to find out that our room had been broken into while Martha (the only girl not given a homestay for some reason) was gone the previous day. They came in through the window and stole Martha's iPod and camera. Nothing else was taken, despite computers and US dollars left out in plane sight. We think they were students here because otherwise they would have taken our money and computers too, but the kids probably didn't know what things were or got scared and left. The best part is that the children's palace doesn't even care. They're barely addressing the issue of ROBBERY and have no solution as to how to prevent this from happening again. This is truly the WORST program I have ever ever ever been on in China. I would not do this again and warn anyone out there from doing any program through Smaller Earth, GVI World, or XuBo (these are all the random organizations that are somehow affiliated with this program). So hopefully that gets worked out.

Anyways, 12 days left until I go home! We have a long break next week so hopefully that'll be fun. Martha and Ricki leave this weekend so that's sad, but apparently 3 new volunteers are arriving tonight!