Snow is cool until you have to do something in it...

So Monday morning I was supposed to take a direct bus from Daye to Yichang since I was traveling by myself. Peach and I got to the bus station to find out that the bus we thought left at 8 left at 7:20. Great. The other option was waiting til the next day or taking a bus to Wuhan then Yichang. I needed to get back to start packing and getting ready for my trip back to America so I opted to brave it on my own to Wuhan. All I had to do after all was go to the ticket window and say "Yichang."

I got to the Wuhan bus station (one of many) only to find out that no buses were going to Yichang because of the snow. The bus station was chaos. I called Peach and told her. She felt terrible that I was there alone so she called a friend who lives in Wuhan and had her come help me. She arrived about 2 hours later (I had Harry Potter 7 to keep me company) after I braved a ridiculous squatty experience. She said she'd heard another bus station had buses going to Yichang so we walked, yes walked, through the coldest wind and snow this Southern girl has ever experienced to another bus station (about 25 min away). No buses. We walked to the train station. No tickets.

My pants, shoes, and socks were soaking wet and freezing. I hadn't eaten anything. The "it could be worse" game I was playing with myself was starting to get old. I had been texting several different people trying to figure out a way to get home. I just wanted my house, my toilet, and my bed! It looked like there was no way of getting to Yichang that day. I called Jian, our foreign affairs guy, who just happened to be trapped in Wuhan too. He, Sophie (my Chinese teacher), and Sophie (the mysterious Ms Yang) had been to a conference that weekend. They had train tickets for this morning but weren't sure if they could get a fourth one since of course, all the people who had wanted a bus were now taking the train.

I decided to at least meet Jian at the hotel they were staying at to see what could be done. All I had to do was get a taxi. Harder than it sounds. All the taxis kept saying the road was too bad when in reality the place I wanted to go was too close and they always wait for the higher price long distance people. I pulled my foreigner card and plopped down 50 yuan for what should have been a 20 yuan ride. At that point I didn't care. The taxi driver was pretty funny. He asked me where I was from and when he found out I was American he stopped and shook my hand, laughing. Then he kept pulling over and waving at his buddies to check out the foreigner in his car. Strange. But he got me where I needed to be (which incidentally was directly in front of the first bus station I had been at. If I'd only known...)

I was so happy to see Jian and Sophie at the hotel! They took care of me and helped me get a room (I didn't even have my passport so I wouldn't have been able to do it alone). I took an amazing hot shower, dried my clothes with a hair dyer, and headed off to dinner with them (more cold walking in the snow). They pulled some guanxi and got 4 train tickets back this morning...I even got a soft sleeper! I was so fortunate...it's nearly impossible to get tickets in circumstances like these. After surviving the stampede to get on the train (words can't describe it...and neither can I since it's Jovial January), I nestled up with Harry Potter once again and finally arrived in Yichang around 2 pm.

I rushed home to do laundry, pack, clean, and get things ready for my final exam at 7. Now here I am blogging when I should be grading papers. A car picks me up at 6 am and hopefully I'll fly from Yichang to Wuhan to Beijing with no problems. Cross your fingers. I have a bad feeling about it. If all goes according to plan, I'll spend one night in Beijing and fly out on the 17th to arrive in Orlando the night of the 17th. Hopefully next time I blog it'll be from America and I'll have no tales to tell!