I was invited by Stilwell and his friends to travel to his hometown. A lot of students ask me to visit their hometown but these guys actually “came thru and delivered”. Strangely, Stilwell and friends are not actually MY students. Stilwell I had met during the 3 hour train ticket line fiasco (see blog of Sept 26th) and he is one of those brave kids that has the guts to talk to a foreigner, visit me and actually follow up on the “hometown visit” invite.
Side Note: Most educated Chinese under 30 can speak some English but not many are willing or brave enough to start talking to me on the bus or in the canteen. (Thank goodness for my MP3 player or I would go crazy during the hour and a half long bus rides to and from Hangzhou). Unfortunately I have to admit that I am also not brave enough when it comes to initiating conversations with strangers and maybe I need to work on this a little bit too! Even I don’t say anything to the “laowai” I see in China. Enough of my insecurities……
Back to the travel story…. Little did I realize that text messaging, going to Stilwell’s English corner and couple of visits with him would lead up to one of the best trips ever . After talking to him I realized that I wasn’t going to be able to travel American Style and I was just going to have to give up control (which is a hard thing for me to do – as some of you know) and travel Chinese style. This meant no firm time of leaving, no tickets, no idea of where I was going and what I was going to see or when I would see it. This was ontop of not knowing where or when we would eat, sleep and pee. I did know it was some place close to Ningbo. So curbing my strong desire to have everything planned out and know everything in advance – I took a deep breath and I just let the adventure happen as it may. (Zac & Nicole would be soooo proud of me) It started out with us catching a stuff-it-bus to the 525 bus stop which takes you to the train station. When we arrived at the station an hour and a half later we found out that we couldn’t get train tickets for Ningbo for another 2 hours (yes, I was biting my tongue at this point) so we climbed into 2 taxis and went to the bus station and bought tickets for Ningbo, which was leaving immediately. The bus arrives in Ningbo and we go across the street to the train station and buy train tickets for going home on Sunday (the American travel person inside of me was feeling relieved). We walk a couple of blocks and catch another 45 min. bus ride into XiKou (pronounced ‘she-coo’), which was sort of our final destination. We meet up with Stilwell’s father and we have a nice meal at a local restaurant. We walked around town and I was given a preview of some of the sites I would see the next day. We shopped for some snacks and visited Stilwell’s High School (they call it middle school) English teacher. She was sweet enough to give all five of us a ride in her brand new very small car to Stilwell’s farm village. We walked the rest of the way to his aunt’s house where us girls were staying and we visited and played cards till about 11.
PS - another major difference between traveling Chinese Style or American style is the amount they take on a trip versus the amount we take on a trip. I had JUST a backpack and my purse, but the girls only brought a large purse. I definitely could have done without my makeup and pajamas and extra top, because all anyone ever sees is your coat, scarf, and gloves.
