May 30, 2006 (updated)

in beijing now. we almost missed the train at 7pm! lauren, christine and i ate dinner with luke and terrence... and when we finished, it was about 5:45 pm. we got on a taxi and were on our way to the train station, but we ran into some MAJOR traffic. by 6:15, we barely got anywhere. so i told the taxi driver to drop us off at the nearest subway station because i knew that it was only going to be a few stops away. this ordeal turned out to be harder than i thought, 'cause lauren's suitcsae was massively huge and heavy! i forgot that the subway stations here don't have escalators going down, so i had to carry my suitcase and lauren's suitcase everywhere! had to go down the stairs.. buy the subway tickets.. pass the luggage over the "entrance blockers"... go into the subway... go down another flight of stairs... it was definitely a memorable experience though. the girls were pretty stressed that we would miss our train. so we sprinted most of the time. luckily, the signs leading to the train station were pretty good.. and when we finally reached the train, we were actually 15 minutes early :P

the 12 hour train ride turned out to be amazing. we were in a luxury-class train and our room had 2 bunk beds in them (which were really clean and nice). there was one other lady in our room - her name was May. She was from Beijing and just went to Shanghai to get her passport. she was so nice... really fun to talk to and she gave us a bunch of places to visit in Beijing.

our hostel that we booked turned out to be right across the street from the shanghai train station. it's called the Beijing City Central International Youth Hostel. because they dont' allow co-ed dorms, i have to stay in a room with 3 other guys. i just met one, but haven't met the other two yet.

we went to the temple of heaven and it was pretty cool.. except the place is MASSIVELY HUGE. nearly 300 hectares big... so it was really tiring. after that, we just walked around in the city.. came back early 'cause we were really tired and i really needed to do laundry.