it never hurts to cry

after a hectic, but nice few days in hohhot it was time to leave and meet zach in beijing (finally). due to visa issues, the whole process of zach coming here has been stressful to say the least- our trip in china has been reduced from 3 weeks to about 1 day together in beijing. before leaving for the bus station, thinking that i was about to see him that night, i got word from him that his flight had been changed to the following day and wouldn't be arriving until 3 pm. although no fault of his own, i was less than happy about this.

i went over to the bus station anyhow knowing that i was going to spend a lonely night in beijing (albeit in a 5 star hilton what what!) and definitely feeling down. i went in and took a seat next to the gate where my bus was supposed to be leaving from, gate 10. my bus didn't leave until 10:30 but i arrived unusually early (for me) since i had a close call on my previous bus ride (zach's sister ariel knows about this, lol). well, 10:30 rolled around and gate 10 was still locked. i thought this was pretty unusual since in my experience chinese buses are ALWAYS on time, but perhaps things were different in inner mongolia. once 10:45 rolled around i started getting nervous.

i asked the guy next to me where he was going and it wasn't beijing. i jumped up and showed my ticket to the woman standing at gate 9 and asked her where the bus was. the people who work at the train/bus stations here are notoriously unhelpful- she shouted something at me quickly and i didn't understand what she said and didn't feel like dealing with her. i saw a girl about my age sitting by gate 10 so i asked her where she was going and again it was not beijing. i asked her if the bus had already come and she told me that it had and that it had left out of gate 9 where the mean ticket lady was. i stood there in shock, not believing that i had been watching the wrong gate the whole time and had no idea.

i didn't know what to do. i knew all the train tickets were booked for the next few days, and i had no idea how many buses there were that day. all of my emotions and frustrations about this whole trip engulfed me at once. as i sat back down in my seat, i buried my face in my hands and started shamelessly crying.

i don't remember why i looked up, but i knew that people would certainly be looking at the only foreigner at the bus station bawling her eyes out. however, i really did not expect it to be as many people as it was. i felt like i was a student in one of my classes crying while all the other students are saying, "teacher, teacher, he/she's crying!" i don't know why crying is such a public event here.

when i looked up not only did i feel incredibly embarrassed but i also saw that the mean ticket lady and all the people surrounding her were motioning me to come over. someone asked me something, i wasn't really in the mental state to listen, and of course someone shouted, "she doesn't understand!"

i basically had a semi-circle around me of chinese people trying to help me, looking at my ticket and talking to the ticket lady. they didn't speak english, except one guy behind me said "follow me", which didn't really make sense at the time, but at least he tried. they all had 11:30 bus tickets for beijing though. as i'm trying to calm myself down and wipe away my tears they were trying to make conversation with me and i'm just like ughhh not now!

finally, the ticket lady took my ticket and wrote in 11:30 on my ticket and gave me a seat number. i couldn't believe it. i put my backpack on the ground, sat on it, and started eating my emotions away with some peanuts. there wasn't a lot of room up there but everyone stood back from me a good foot or so to give me some space i guess.

when i passed through the gate, the ticket lady was super nice to me that time around. she spoke very slowly to me so i could understand and explained where my seat was. guess she learned her lesson.

not really sure how i got a seat as the bus was completely full and i even saw some friends/family have to separate because there weren't enough seats for some of them. i was even sitting in the very front- my favorite place to sit on these buses because you can see everything in front of you. did someone get kicked off or do they leave a few seats open to be filled at the end? at any rate, the perks of being a laowai i guess....