Nanjing #1

We went to Nanjing this past weekend. It was lots of fun! I traveled on my first train here in China! Boy was it crazy. The train station is crazy here in Bengbu. We’re lucky we’ve got one so close to us. Mary our native coordinator helped us buy tickets. We bought them the morning we were leaving so we had to STAND on the train for 2.5 hours. We didn’t have seats. It was a long train ride. It was out of my comfort zone because we had to stand in the isles between people and everyone’s touching everyone. It was just an adventurous experience. I got my Book of Mormon out thinking maybe I’d read it since we were going to be on there for 2.5 hours and all of a sudden this Chinese guy and girl behind me tapped me on the shoulder and asked if it was a bible. I was kind of shocked. And I told them yes. They were so interested. The girl said one of her foreign teachers gave her one of those. The guy was funny he was like yeah that looks kind of like my bible but a little bit different and he wanted to look at it to see what was different about it, of course it was that mine has The Book of Mormon, D&C, and Pearl of Great Price connected to it. I felt so bad because I’m not allowed to talk about religion at all. They were frustrated also because they wanted to talk to me about it. The girl was telling me that she had been reading it and her foreign teacher really impacted her. She wants to know more. She told me that she feels like God has a plan for each of us and we are able to make our own decisions, she is right! I wanted to tell her that so bad and tell her more about what I believe, it’s so frustrating not being able too especially when she’s interested. She asked me if I was Christian and I said yes. She told me she wanted to know more. I told her I wasn’t able to tell her and both she and the guy were like we don’t think you understand. You’re not a Priest or Pastor or anything so you won’t transform us into your religion all we want to do is hear about thing. Ha-ha it was hilarious the way he said it. We talked about some other stuff for a while and then the girl tapped me on the shoulder and said Michelle, I really think that God inspired me to meet you on this train today. She was so adorable and she’d totally become a member of our church! I just know it, someday she will. 


Nanjing was such a fun city. We stayed in this little hostel. At first when we walked up to it I was a bit nervous but our room was actually really nice and we had 8 of us so we had one room all to ourselves instead of sharing it with random people. The air conditioning didn’t work; well it did until about 10:30 pm. A few of us girls were still up but Mary and Hannah were asleep already and Mary kept waking up saying “Michelle if you are cold you can unplug the air conditioner. We were all fine so I didn’t unplug it. Then a few minutes later she wakes up and this time she just says “Michelle, unplug the air conditioner.” She must’ve been too cold. So I turned it off and we could never get it to turn back on so we were sweating bullets all night but it was fun. 


Our hostel was in the most perfect spot. It was on this street with tons of shopping and restaurants and touristy things to do. We saw our first Americans there! It was so exciting. I saw other blondes! Cami, Britney and I are the only blondes in our group. Our whole group of 7 girls attracts a lot of attention but especially us girls. We traveled up to some famous purple mountain and when our taxi finally dropped us off the cable car wasn’t working to take us all the way to the top because it was raining. It was such a bummer. We were so sad. While we were walking down a path a group of high school students were there and they started swarming me. I had about 30 people surrounding me saying “hello” “hello, Where are you from.” It made me a little nervous. I’m still trying to get used to that. They were very kind though and kept saying “you are so beautiful” they were being way too kind. I was sweating so bad I looked like I just had gotten out of the shower. 


After that we went and shopped for a long time. I bought some really cute clothes you’ll get to see in a few months. And some DVD’s to add to my collection. They were a dollar each. I tried to get ones that are new so they’re ones you haven’t seen yet! We can watch them together! It was lots of fun. Of course there were creepy people around but you just got to act tough and can’t be quite as friendly. We went on a night boat ride on the river around town. That was really neat. There was a show on the water with these fountains and dancing girls. It was cool. On Sunday we got to go to church! I haven’t had the chance to go the last 2 weeks so I was so excited to go and take the sacrament and be able to attend all the meetings. Church was held in the basement of this really nice hotel in Nanjing. There were a lot of people there actually I was surprised. There is another ILP group in a city pretty close to there and the whole group of 20 teachers was there. And there were a lot of couples that were there because the husband was working with some company here in China and just a bunch of random people. It was so neat to be in a land where the gospel can’t even be talked about and gather together to worship and feel the spirit. I really enjoyed it. Even though we have to travel we are going to try and go more often. It’ll cost a little more and take some time but we’re going to do it. 


After church we had to head straight to the train station and headed back to “home.” As we were boarding the train to come home we kind of got split up. Rach, Cami, Hannah, Brittney and I were all together and Hailee, Tori, and Mary were behind us. Our group hopped on the train and accidentally got on cart 13 instead of 12. Which was fine but we were separated. We got on the train and realized what had happened but decided we’d just stay when all of a sudden these people sitting in seats 2 rows back started fighting. I was terrified. They were hitting and punching and screaming and I was so scared. I felt like we really should keep pushing through and get further away from the situation because more and more people kept getting involved and since we’re American’s it just made me nervous. It went on for a long time and I seriously felt so scared. A very nice Chinese man could see how frightened we were new English so he let us borrow his phone and contact Mary to let her know we got on the train and we were ok. We squished in by these nice ladies and this man who knew English and they kind of protected us from all the fighting that was going on. Rach and Cami watched but I just couldn’t do it. They told me not to. After seeing that guy get beat to death a few months back it just terrified me to see people fighting. It’s crazy because that’s just there way of life. It wasn’t just the men fighting. Women and children were even involved. It’s so scary. The man who spoke English was telling us that they started fighting because someone was in the wrong seat and it turned into this huge thing because they lost there temper. The “policeish” people came back and made them separate and moved one guy up to a different cart and then I felt much safer. 


The 2 ½ hour train ride turned into about 5 hours…it was long. The Chinese people by us were so kind though. We found lots that knew English and we talked with them and then they’d switch us and let us sit down for a few moments and then we’d let them. The second half of the train ride turned out great. I was glad. We met up with Mary and the other girls when we got off and then returned to our school safely! We had a good weekend.