My Slow Boat to China

I've made it to China almost without incident. I woke up somewhere in Itaewon, well at my hotel but I don't know where it was exactly. I saw quite a few embassies like I had the night before and walked up a big hill and then down again since I really had no clue where I was. It was so weird seeing all those white faces in Itaewon. I could tell virtually all the young people were affiliated with the military. Perhaps a few of the single ones were English teachers. Military seems to travel in groups for some reason. I was walking behing a mass of them and they reminded me of when I was in Texas. It's nice that I'm not there anymore. I found a bookstore and bought Ulysses by James Joyce and a new copy of Lonely Planet China, since their website lied to me. No used copy to be found.

Then I had to ride the subway for an hour or so. I transfered twice. I really thought since I was the second to last stop that the crowds would start to thin out a lot sooner than the 4th to the end when I was finally able to sit down. I was on it for 27 stops or something. So many stops were universities too. So&so Catholic Univ., Theological, Christian, Bible. Why do the schools need to be associated with religions?

I was worried there wouldn't be any tickets to Weihai left but there were so that was a relief. Actually, it was annoying also. I don't know if it was just me and I don't know that they were Chinese for sure but they had no respect for the line or queue if you will. I was standing maybe a metre behind the person at the wicket who was taking forever and then I switched to a second window. I was the only one waiting but somehow all these people ended up going ahead of me. I was about to get pushy but then it was free. I saw maybe 4 non-Asian people on the ship. I wondered if they had escaped lives as English teachers. I didn't talk to any of them. I talked to one man who was Korean or Chinese, I didn't ask. He asked about my book but since I'd only read about 20 pages I couldn't tell him much. Then I saw people grabbing tons of toilet paper off the reels in the rooms. I slept in a mass room with maybe 36 beds. It was divided into 3 little hallways though and everyone had a side that was wall and another that was curtain. Anyways, that doesn't really matter. I had a nice pillow and slept well for the most part. I guess until I thought that I should be getting up but I didn't look at the time for quite awhile. It was only 630 and I was worried it was nearly 8, the time we were supposed to disembark. I don't think I got out of the ship until 9 something. So that was needless worrying. Oh right, the toilet paper, anyways there was a lot of it in the rooms. Toilet paper exists in strange places in Korea and I've forgotten how strange it is. I saw people pulling toilet paper for days. I don't know what they did with it. They could've absorbed quite a large body of water though.

So I got to China. I brought something illegal too. I'm quite the rebel. I snuck in some bananas. Customs in Asia seems to be a funny thing too. At the borders in Canada and the US, they ask you all these questions about what you will be doing, what you have with you, etc. The 3 times I've gone through customs in Asia, into and out of Korea and into China, I've only been told one word. "Sign." I forgot to sign my arrival card to/for (don't know) China. She looked at the photo and me several times. I must not look like the person I was on August 9th, 2004. Don't ask me why I remember the date my passport photo was taken. So after that and feeling uneasy about my bananas (they even went through the x-ray machine, I imagined myself getting into all kinds of trouble but I'd been through immigration already so it was too late to get rid of them. Then I wondered out of the terminal into China.