Time for an update! I guess. It has been a while since my last update, so I figured I might as well keep y'all posted. October 1 is National Day in China, which is on par with the 4th of July back in the States. Except not. They go all out for this in China. At our school, they gave students an entire week off, which is pretty common. In order to make it so they had enough school days, though, they made us teach on Saturday and Sunday. Bleh. My week is all messed up, now. And most of my students didn't come to class on Sunday. Jeff was actually shooed from the building by a custodian before he could teach his second class on Sunday afternoon. Of course, he wasn't about to complain.

Everyone and their dog travels back home or somewhere else during this peak travel time. Which means that train tickets are a hot commodity. Jeff and I figured we could travel to Shanghai and see the sights. After all, there are a few trains that travel from Xiangtan to Shanghai that leave every day. Unfortunately, we didn't take into account the massive amounts of people traveling. With 1.3 billion people, China needs to move a lot in a very little amount of time. Like an unknowing American, I booked our hostel first... When we got to the train station, the line actually came out of the building. Before standing in line, we had my helpful Chinese student ask if the trains were all booked--and they were. We wouldn't have even been able to get standing room only tickets to Shanghai. We ought to have bought our tickets in advance. But the problem with doing that is, depending on the train, you can buy them only a few days in advance.

But that's okay. Instead of going to Shanghai, Jeff and I will stay here and visit more of Xiangtan. We've only seen a limited area of downtown, after all. Plus it's cheaper staying here, and we don't run the risk of not getting back--you can't buy return tickets at the station you leave from. Though, Jeff and I now know how to find tickets to go to Hong Kong at the end of our stay here, which is a definite bonus.

Anywho, I decided to capture a video of my walk from my classroom back to my apartment. If you visit China, you need to keep in mind that appearances on the outside are very deceiving, as you'll see in the video.