Panzhihua (2/2/13)

After IST (the day it ended), I left on a train with the group of volunteers I’d be traveling with for the next two weeks: Jason, Ben, Jeff, Kelly, Aaron, Mike, and Isai, as well as Sydni because we were passing through her site, Panzhihua, and we spent a night there before the rest of us went on to Yunnan (the province directly south of Sichuan province).

Chilling on the beds in our first night train

We took a night train from Chengdu to Panzhihua, which was my first night train in China. It was pretty loud and rickety, so I didn’t sleep super great.  It was funny in the morning when we were starting to slow down, and Ben said “This isn’t Panzhihua, it’s some other town.”  And then right as he finished saying that a stewardess walked by and said, “Panzhihua dao le,” which means arriving in Panzhihua.  Once we got off the train, we rode a bus for about 40 minutes then walked for a little while before getting to Sydni’s apartment. After our long train ride, we were content to chill there for a while.  Then we walked to her school and a park on a hill above it.  We even stumbled upon a zoo and weren’t charged to walk through.  There weren’t too many animals but it was cool to see red pandas (one of my favorite animals).  We went on bumper cars and this ride that’s like a wheel that spins you around.  Nothing beats going on amusement park rides of questionable security and safety in a developing country.

Walking up to Sydni's school

Red cutie pie!

Never too old for bumper cars

Later we met up with some of Sydni’s friends, Richard (a teacher from Hawaii) and some students.  Then we had our first semi-major mishap of our trip.  Sydni kind of has two apartments because the first one she lived in had bad plumbing problems so she moved to another place one complex over, but she stills has the key to the first one.  We realized some time that afternoon that the one key had been locked inside the old apartment.  About half of our group had left bags in there, and we had to leave for our train really early the next morning.  So it was pretty important that we get that door opened ASAP.  Since it was basically the holidays, Sydni’s waiban and school leaders were out of town so she couldn’t just ask them for the spare.  So she went off with Jeff to hunt down a key.

In the meantime the rest of us went to dinner, and then another place to drink and eat snacks.  As with any occasion where there’s drinking and foreigners, the Chinese hosts went around and toasted everyone.  Which usually for me is kind of tedious because it interrupts when you’re trying to eat, but with so many of us there together it wasn’t too bad. In fact, it was pretty fun.  It was also interesting to see how other volunteers interact with Chinese people. At some point, Sydni and Jeff returned with the key (I think she found a friend who had a copy).

Sydni's friend Richard gave us some very good massages!

I’m really glad we got to stop in Panzhihua, even if it was for only a short time.  Although it’s part of Sichuan, it’s so far south that it might as well be in Yunnan.  The weather was so warm which was a pleasant change from the chilly overcast weather in the Chengdu basin.  Several times I felt like I was in SoCal.  I’d been looking forward to blue skies and sunshine again for a long time, and it was great to experience that again!