Today was our last day in China. Most of the group was leaving in the
morning and there were no formal plans. Ryan and I, and another couple had
booked a different flight that didn’t leave until the late evening. To kill the
day Gump helped us book a cab to take us to the Dragon Lake. It was just a nice
lake inside the city with shops going around it. It’s a good tourist place in
the summer but we were early in the season so it was still quiet. We wandered
all around. We saw people fishing and swimming, even though the water still had
ice on it in a few places! We had lunch in an Italian restaurant, we got a
fancy wood stove baked pizza for super cheap. Later we passed by a news stand
selling magazines and books. We found the entire comic series of TinTin in English
and Ryan jumped on it. I found a pleasant goat magazine for 2yuan and couldn’t
resist.
I haven’t explained this before, this was one of those
little inside things that made the trip so special. Ryan and I would sometimes
flip on the cartoons in the morning before we met the group and there was a
show on all the time with these goat sheep creatures, and the villains were
wolfs except the main bad guy had a baby wolf who was friends with the goats
and it was the cutest thing ever. Well while we traveled we saw merchandise for
this show everywhere. Seriously every place we went we saw bags and candy bars
and stuffed animals and DVDs of this pleasant goat show. So every time we saw
something with one of the characters we would yell and point out Pleasant Goat!!
It was one of those kinds of things and it was fun.
 |
| Big Bad Wolf from Pleasant Goat on candy wrapper |
After dinner we were off to the airport. It was weird to be
leaving. We had traveled around China for 26 days. Our group had become our
little family and now we were all leaving to go back to our “normal” lives. It
was sad to say goodbye but it had been the most amazing experience I had ever
had. For one month we had been transported to another world with a whole
different culture and lifestyle and we could go home and show people pictures,
but pictures never capture the feeling of being
there. Pictures can’t describe how terrifying it is to try and cross a street where
red lights are only optional. You can’t taste how delicious that dumpling in
the picture is. Pictures can’t form that bond of friendship that you have when
you share the triumph of climbing up 1600 steps to stand on top of the Great
Wall.
In one word that trip was amazing. In every way possible.
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