What a weekend

I am boarding the train in Xian on a Thursday night to travel 969 kilometers to WeWei, Zhang Kai's, home town.  While I am there I will visit his high school, meet his parents, and ride a Camel.  I am traveling light and only have a few things in the back pack.  This will be a new experience for me. I have only been on a train once before and that was to travel from Kalamazoo to Peoria.  That train took 12 hours also but I am not concerned because I have sleeping seat on the train and Zhang Kai has a regular seat.  If he needs some sleep we will change places. I am an old person but every one tells me that I have a young heart, which means they think I am old.  To travel across China by train how exotic. At least I will be able to get some rest. We leave at 10:55 and arrive in WuWei at 11 am the next day.

This is my sleeping car.  The hard bench in the crowed part of the train.  Some how when we bought the tickets the fact that I would not be able to relax got lost in the translation.  Oh well it was only 12 hours and I have a young heart. When you travel on the train you can get the feeling that everyone there is old friends only to find out that no one knows each other and has only met because they are on the train together.  This was the old slow train, but it had a young heart.

I did make sure that on the return trip we had a sleeping seat.  I have never seen one but will find out more when we return.  I do know that on the bench seat I could doze for about 20 minutes and then had to wake up, move around a little, try and stretch out, and see if I could go back to sleep for another 20 minutes. You also look at your watch and go, "oh, jeepers it is only 3 am and we still have to ride this until 11 am."  The only thing you hope for is to have the ride be better once the sun comes up or for some one to leave at the next town and for the extra seat to be open.  How exotic is that?  At least you can smoke on the train.