You cannot imagine how excited Courtney and I were to head out on our vacation! Thursday inched by at school as we impatiently anticipated our flight out of Shanghai that evening after school. Usually Thursdays are a laid back day at school because the Chinese teachers teach the majority of the lessons; however, all lessons were canceled so that we could have a dress rehearsal for the spring concert. Following the rehearsal, we each had a meeting with Morgan to talk about the concert. Needless to say, we were all frustrated and a little bit on edge, so the day could not have ended early enough.
Anyway, I had packed the night before, so very shortly after school we were catching a taxi headed for the airport. We booked our flight through a company called Spring Airlines, eminent for having the cheapest deals on flights. In fact we did get a really good deal on plane tickets but we quickly discovered why they were so cheap. First, while we were checking in, we had to pay extra for our baggage because we were only allotted a combined total of 13 kilograms for our checked and carry-on bags and at security check they took my tube of toothpaste because it was too big (and unfortunately Court had relied on me to bring toothpaste so she did not bring any) – not a great way to start. Then once we got through the security check, we literally sat in a small waiting room that looked like a janky bus station instead of an airport. We were both starving and there was no food, and our flight was delayed about 2 hours. When it was finally time to board the plane, we all went outside and got onto a people mover that took us to the middle of nowhere to board our plane (really weird). The plane was the smallest plane that I have ever been on. My knees were nearly touching the seat in front of me and I have really short legs!
Luckily it was a pretty short flight, and in about an hour we were landing in Xiamen (She-a-men). From there we got our bags, and loaded on to a bus that took us to the ferry on the other side of the island. For the first two nights we were staying in a hostel on Gulangyu Island (Goo-lan-u) – a small island off the coast of Xiamen (which was also an island). We did not get to see much that night because it was already after midnight when our plane landed, so we went straight to the ferry to cross the bay to Gulangyu. When we finally made it to the island, it was like a ghost town. We did not see a single other person and everything was closed down and dark. We were afraid that we were not going to be able to find our hostel, but luckily it was very close to the ferry dock, and we eventually stumbled upon it.
We felt terrible because the Inn Keeper was a little old man who slept on a pull out couch in front of the door and we had to wake him up so he could let us in, but he gave us the keys to our room and showed us where to go. We had booked a “dorm style” hostel room because it was extremely cheap compared to having a single room and we thought it could be an interesting experience. Turns out it was not such a fabulous idea. When we arrived at the hostel after 1:00am, there were three other girls sleeping in the rather small room and we had to tip toe around to get settled in and ready for bed. Two of the girls had gotten cold and had taken the blankets off of our beds to use, then tried to return them to us. There were three sets of bunk beds and a locker for each bed, so we locked up as much stuff as we could (at least the important stuff) and went straight to bed on the hardest bed I have ever slept in.
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