I'm Back!

Well I'm in Alaer and I finally have my internet working so I'm back to posting. I have so much to cover I don't really know where to begin. I guess the motto begin at the beginning is as good as any so I'll talk a little about how I got here. As some of you know I've been waiting pretty much all summer for my visa. Actually I was waiting for two pieces of paper from China which I needed to get my visa. Well the finally came and when I mean finally I mean that they came two days before I was supposed to leave. Actually I almost missed them since I needed to sign for the package and I almost didn't hear the mailman at the door. With the papers in hand I needed to get the visa the next day but luckily the Chinese Embassy offers same day visa service for an extra fee, there actually seemed to be quite a few people taking the same course. Well there were no problems with the visa so I got it back the same day and could actually leave.

Getting to Alaer is a bit of an expedition. It took four flights plus a car and while I left at 7am on Friday I didn't arrive until about 7pm on Sunday. The first flight was to Chicago which was fine except for some turbulence. The big flight from Chicago to Shanghai was actually not full and while I had a person sitting next to me he moved later since I had my window open a lot and he wanted to sleep. Since I was flying West despite the fact that the flight was about 15 hours the sun never set, and I arrived in Shanghai at 2pm on Saturday. The flight wasn't so bad as the had those little TVs in the back of the headrest which make a huge difference on flights that long. I watched a pretty good move the Ghost Writer, and a bunch of TV shows including an episode of 30 Rock I'd never seen which had people looking over to find out why I was laughing so hard. In Shanghai I just stopped in a hotel right near the airport and managed to stay up only a few hours before passing out.

The next day it was time again for some flights. The next one was from Shanghai to Urumqi and was about five hours. I was stressed the whole time though since my connection flight was the last one of the day and the flight from Shanghai was delayed about 45 minutes. I got into Urumqi with not much time to spare and I had to get my bags exit then find the right counter and check in again since to save money I'd booked the flights separately. The Urumqi airport though sucks and instead of lines there were just scrums at the counters and general chaos. I manged to get to the correct counter about 35 minutes before my flight was supposed to leave only to be informed that this place was supposed to only allow one checked bag not two, and I had two big bags with all my stuff in them. I started asking if I could pay extra but the lady at the counter just told me to bring my smaller one, still really big, on as a carry on. This seemed insane to me but not having much time I just said OK and hustled to security.

Of course at security they found a bunch of liquids in my bag, since it was never supposed to be a carry on, and took all my shaving cream and some of my Pepto. Finally they let me passed, I was freaking out a little trying to explain that my deodorant wasn't a liquid to people who spoke zero English. When I finally got to the gate it turned out that my flight was delayed a little and the whole thing was so confusing I almost got on the wrong plane. The plane from Urumqi to Aksu was really small only three seats across, and I had put my big bag on an empty seat near the front, which actually seemed like a common thing since mine wasn't the only bag there. The flight from Urumqi to Aksu was really interesting though since I saw a lot of Xinjiang out the window. I was amazed how mountainous it was and just how dry most of those mountains were. It looked totally alien not only from America but from Eastern China as well. The most interesting thing was that when I looked out over the desert it looked really hazy which I think was actually from the sand since there's no way there's enough industry out here to produce such intense haze.

I finally arrived in the Aksu airport, which is pretty much one runway and a small building. There weren't gates or buses you just walked across the tarmac. I had to go to a separate shed to get my second piece of luggage. The school had sent a car to pick me up with one student named Sunshine in it. He was very nice and talked a little about the town on the about two hour ride from the Aksu airport to Alaer. On the Wikipedia page it says there are something like 200,000 people in Alaer but if there are really that many I'll eat my hat. It's maybe 40,000 and there are only two big streets in the whole town. I hate to leave you hanging here but there still so much to discuss that I have to break this up into several blog posts. The next one will be on my first impressions of the town and the school.