厦门 (Xiamen)

It has been over a year since I have been in this beautiful city and I can't express the emotions that I feel just walking through its streets again. At the same time everything just seems so different. Furthermore, it is a stark contrast compared to the city (Nanchang) where I have been living for the last 4 months. I wish I had a better way of explaining it, but the best I could do would be to say that it would be like living in Boise and then visiting Seattle.

Upon arriving things went every way we didn't expect them to go; however, as I have been taught "One must always be expected for the unexpected in China - and flexible". So after wandering around for about 15 minutes and asking a group of Chinese people we finally found our "hostel". We walked in, handed them our reservations, and that is when things started not to work out too well. We noticed - somewhat strangely - that this place had no computers and that it was staffed in what - to us - appeared to be a peculiar manner. After about 5-10 minutes of the lady looking at our reservations and asking about rooms she told us that they didn't have any record of our reservations.

I thought this is kind of strange and not too good. We spent the next half an hour or so debating back and forth about whether or not we had reservations and the issue of having made a deposit with their company. At the mention of money being exchanged they called someone who begin a conversation between me and the person at the front desk by handing a cell phone back and forth. The debate came to the conclusion - that is our conclusion - that the company lost the reservation and/or our booking agent that we used failed to send along the information or pocketed the money. At any rate, the people were very nice and arranged for us to stay at another hotel called the Easy Inn, which was actually cheaper and somewhat nice. So it pays to smile, nod, and be patient when dealing with the unknown; that, of course, and send some thoughts up to the Father every once in awhile.

After booking our room, getting settled, and refreshing ourselves we hit the town to get out and do something else besides stay indoors since we had been in a train for some 18 hours. We walked around and marveled at our rather modern surroundings that appeared surreal to us having come from Nanchang. As Shannon commented, it looked like we were hanging out in some large theme park. We walked for about 1 mile or and found a ferris wheel and large ship in the middle of a huge shopping center that was oddly enough deserted.

I must say, though that the large ship was much more interesting and overall more intriguing. I mean who walks into a large shopping area expecting to see a huge ship parked right in the middle of it? I, of course, had no choice but to be as tourist-like as I could and take a picture of it so that I could show it to you. Below is a picture of the ship.

After checking out the mall area we headed over to an international bookstore that happened to have some amazing coffee! Shannon and I couldn't believe that there was actually place that had real coffee with real espresso. The place we went to made hazelnut lattes for 12元 a piece, which is about equivalent to $1.80 for a 12 ounce latte. It was so ridiculous since we usually pay about $3.00 a "coffee" at Dio, which is usually not even really coffee but some kind of substitute. I have to say that was really cool!

I should note that I was able to have dinner with a good friend of mine named Wang Yue this evening and catch up on everything that has been going on with her. Tomorrow we will be going to see Xia Da and Gulongyu, so I will probably have some more pictures for you tomorrow!

(Andy, Shannon, Jonathan, and Laura making fish faces)