Friday

Today I got my train ticket for Wuhan. I was really happy to be able to get it: tickets are usually pretty hard to come by during high travel season. I waited in line for at least half an hour and only 5-6 people were in front of me. Behind me there were another 25 or so people and that was just at one of hundreds of ticket offices in Beijing. I went past a couple of them tonight and at every single one, the line was waaaay out the door and snaking down the sidewalk. I'm going on one of the new bullet trains! They are brand new trains and travel at 200kph - really fast! I'm curious to see what it will be like.

Here is one of the many reasons I love living in China: street vendors and their less than legally produced wares. Tonight for only 25RMB (just over $3), the same as I paid for my mocha frappichino at Starbucks, I bought the movie, The Devil Wears Prada, and two books, Memoirs of a Geisha and The Thornbirds. Yeah! Reading material for the train! It's so nice being able to buy English books and so cheaply too. Now the challenge will be to not start reading them until I get on the train...