Today we got up at 8:30 and this time we also both had the same amount of sleep, which was a lot nicer for Justin. We didn’t have time for showers as we didn’t have too much time. We were driven back to Chengdu where Justin and his mom went to his teacher and got a spare key to her apartment. We then drove to her apartment and quickly picked up our bag that we had left there. Next up was to drive to the bus station in Chengdu. As it was close to lunch time, we left the bags in the car and went to a restaurant for a nice lunch. It was interesting at one point because some tibetans came into the restaurant begging for money. Staff quickly got them out however. Once we got done with dinner, we grabbed our bags from the car, got tickets to go from Chengdu (程度) to Ya’an (雅安). As we had just missed a bus, we sat and waited for an hour.
Once the next bus arrived, we put our larger bags underneath and grabbed our seats. As there were two seats on each side of the isle, Justin and I sat next to each other and his mom sat on the other side of the isle. She quickly became friends with the person she was sitting next to and for the next two and a half hours, traded food between all of us and she talked with him and Justin while Justin and I talked or napped. The drive there was far better and calmer than driving in Chengdu. There is a highway that connects many of the further cities to each other and it’s different than even a tollroad in America. These roads are two lanes on each direction with trees all over the place to mute the sound. Also, since the area itself is very scenic, depending on the weather you can see mountains, etc quite easily. Once we got to Ya’an, the bus drove around and finally got to the bus station which was a lot more rural than in Chengdu. We took two taxis and went to an apartment that his dad is house-sitting at and that is where we will sleep for the several days. This apartment was interesting as it was actually two stories tall. The first floor contained a sitting room, bathroom, kitchen, living room and bedroom. The second floor contained a bedroom, another room and another bathroom that was bigger. For the most part, I used the upstairs bedroom as it had a normal toilet in it whereas the first floor contained a squat toilet, which I’ve grown to not really like too much.
After we got our stuff settled, we went to his dad’s side of the family, to one of their apartments for dinner. After dinner, there was naturally more pictures and I watched some TV while everyone talked. After we left we went to a supermarket for food and then went back to the apartment. we didn’t get to see Justin’s family’s apartment yet but I think we’ll get to tomorrow maybe. We pulled most of the stuff from our luggage and started to organize everything, which caused the living room of the apartment to become a chaotic mess as everything was everywhere. After we’d gotten everything organized however, we went back out again for a late-night meal of noodles just down the street. The small restaurant was open 24 hours a day and had noodles for 3-5 RMB a bowl – considerably cheaper than Chengdu and certainly Beijing let alone America.
Once full we came back to the apartment and took nice warm showers. I called home for the first time in a few days and then we went to bed. The bed as a very large four-post bed. If there’s not a picture below of it, I’ll try to take one later.
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