Alex in China

(note: that blog title is for my parents…remember that book!?)

So I hit a bump in the road today and made a mistake that has caused today to be one of the toughest days on the trip so far. Today was the day we were scheduled to leave for Beijing and Xi’an for ten days. We left early this morney to catch a 7 hour train ride to Beijing.

No big deal, right? Wrong.

I forgot my passport.

That’s right, I broke the cardinal rule of traveling abroad. As we’re boarding the train I suddenly realize that my passport is sitting on my desk back at the university and there is nothing I can do about it. I need this passport to fly back from Xian to Qingdao so this is not good.

And just to make things more fun, I woke up with a cold this morning! So I spent the seven hour ride blowing my nose and loading myself with Tylenol.

I know I sound like a complete debbie-downer but the story get’s better so I’m going to go ahead and finish!

We get to the hotel we’re staying in which is a special hotel owned by the Ministry of Education. And they ask for our passports. Uh oh! Turns out they can’t let anyone without a passport stay in the hotel. They insist that I’m not allowed to stay here until I get a passport. We spend about an hour at this point arguing with them to let me stay. I try to produce as much proof as I can about who I am but they won’t budge. At this point I’m starting to wonder how much it would cost me to grab a room at a nearby hotel on my own when Tio comes to the rescue. Tio is able to get a hold of the passport copies from the study abroad office just in time and the hotel grudgingly accepts them.

I’m glad it’s over, thanks Tio.

But on the bright side, I managed to get some strong medicines in after that and we enjoyed a fancy Peking Duck meal (including a nice dish of duck heart). Things are running smooth again and I have my passport in the mail.

Beijing is huge, expect my more posts in the next few days about it. My nyquil is kicking in so I think I’m gonna stumble my way to bed -a