“Spring Festival sucks… It’s like 4th of July but gay” or; the anticlimactic return to Wuhan.

Today we arrived in Wuhan after a few days in beautiful Shanghai. Our return to China from Thailand was one of reluctance and angst, as we knew the weather was going to be vicious, the people impatient, and the smell of delicious food rare.

We stayed in a hostel called UCool which looked from the outside like some kind of amusement park or haunted house. It was the first time for me to stay in a hostel, and it was quite the experience. We met a group of British girls as well as 2 ladies from Ireland. The former were only 19 and were amusing to death, and the latter were on holiday from teaching in Korea and instantly charmed the socks off of me. There were more people there but I didn’t talk to them as much. The nights were late and the days were cold, and the sweater that I bought to keep me warm developed an enormous hole in the side, but I refused to ditch it. I looked like a hobo most of the time.

I’d like to go back to Shanghai when everything isn’t all closed due to Chinese New Year, a.k.a. Spring Festival and when its actually nice outside. Chinese New Year is nothing like New Years in America. Everything is closed, and people set off fireworks. It was frustrating to walk around in the cold looking for New York Deli-style sandwiches only to find that it would be closed for the next 5 days. It was entertaining to run through the streets as people lit 20 foot long lines of noisy fireworks alongside you, to watch people light roman candles inside bars inches from your face. But I was just so cold.

The return to the apartment was full of worry, as I had basically known that a pipe somewhere would burst in the cold and flood my already water damaged room. Sure enough, everything is soaked, and our water isn’t working. This is community wide, not just us. Hopefully in the morning it will be back on. My hands are working at 20 percent capacity right now, hard to type this.

But I am strangely so very happy. My vacation was one of the most exciting times of my life. It was pure glory. I can live off that for at least a while.

Teaching soon, don’t know exactly when. I hope it warms up.

Life is possibly the best.

Coco