Day Nine: Goodbye to Mudan Jiang and 23 hour train ride to Dalian

Tuesday was the saddest day of all. We had decided to go with Wang Yan to Dalian so that we could spend more time with her, (that is where she opened another school a couple of years ago and has to go there on business occasionally) but I don't think we realized that 4 days in Mudan Jiang would just be too few.
First we said goodbye to their cat MiMi. While cute, I'm still allergic. Apparently she had issue with me too.
Our train left at 10 in the morning so we only had time to go back to the photo studio to pick out the pictures we wanted to be in our albums real quick. Shuangxi went with us which was great but it's too bad that's how we had to spend what little bit of time we had with him.
Er Yi, Lao Lao, Mr. Xue, and Shuangxi all saw us off at the train station. They got us all settled in to our bunks
and then relished in the few more minutes we had to be next to them. Gordon and Lao Lao held hands
and I struggled to figure out how to tell Shuangxi how embarrassed and sorry I was that we traveled half way around the world and only saw him for a day. I still can't believe that I let that be the case. I really just didn't know how to express how much regret I had over that, and that it made absolutely no sense. So in the end I just took pictures.


Then it was way too quickly time to say goodbye. Lao Lao got off the train but Gordon couldn't stand it and ran after her for one more embrace.
I really love this picture of Gordon forcing herself to get back on the train with a wet face, still holding on behind her.
We continued to watch,wave, and weep while looking out the window.
There was a lot of tears from the foreigners at this point. That tends to make Chinese people uncomfortable I think.

I was actually glad that we had this 23 hour train ride in front of us. We got the middle bunk this time, the best one, and when that's the case it really can be kind of a nice time to think and write. And I needed some time to take in the whole experience and what it meant to me.
We read a book about Confucius that Wang Yan wanted us to have.
We spent time just looking out the window watching the train twist in front of us and the countryside passing by. I was really sad that we didn't have any time on this trip to go to any of the farming communities. That was always one of my favorite things to do.
We puzzled over which packaged meat to buy
We also spent a lot of time trying to not look at this man picking his nose for about 15 consecutive minutes.
When we stopped in a city, we had a few minutes to step off the train and exercise.
Here is Gordon and Wen Wen taking advantage of the space. Wen Wen, by way of introduction was not somebody we knew from our previous trip. She is from Mudan Jiang and I actually met her once last time but she had already gone away to university when we were living there. She recently went into business with Wang Yan on one of the schools so she was with us for the remainder of the trip and I really grew to like her a lot in those few days. We spent a good amount of time on the train talking about politics, culture, and honest business practices.
Then there was more great Chinglish to document.
The instructions to Flush the Closet Pot were found in this room- the bathroom, with is a hole in the train that leads right out the the tracks below and can get awful cold if you have to spend any lengthy amount of time above the hole with a bare rear.
Somehow in taking the picture of the "Smonking room" sign, Gordon managed to seriously upset one of the train officials. He got quite bent out of shape and from that point on made it his personal duty to keep a constant eye on us, and for the remainder of the trip he really was never far away. In fact he decided to sit about a foot away from our bed all night as we slept. It was kinda creepy.
I was especially fond of the way he thought we would understand Sign Language better than Chinese, even though we would speak to him in Chinese. . .