And so it begins...

And so it begins...on the road again. I'm standing at the boarding
gate for an overnight sleeper train that leaves for Beijing in fifteen
minutes. I won't be back here for a month and a half. I've been
daydreaming of this trip for over a year now--I can't believe it's
actually happening--or, I hope it is. I won't feel completely easy
until I actually have the visa.

...

I've been, for some unknown reason, listening to ABBA the past few
days. I constantly have on of the songs stuck in my head. While
waiting in line, one of the very silliest was on repeat in my
brain--the "King Kong Song." So, once on the train, that was the
first song I played on my mp3 player. The first song of the
journey--off to an interesting start.

We left the Wuchang station and headed across the river towards
Hankou--hold up. I just saw a guy wearing khaki shorts over red plaid
pants. And judging from his spiky hipster haircut, he thinks he looks
good.---okay, where was I? Oh yes...across the river towards Hankou.
As we approached the bridge over the Chiang Jiang (Yangtze), I saw the
big tower that looks a bit like Seattle's Space Needle, at least to
me, that is one of the most recognizable things on the Wuhan skyline.
It was lit up as it was getting dark fast. I tried to take a picture
of it out the window (didn't work), because it was the first time I'd
seen it. Weird. I'm seeing some of the major sights of Wuhan as I
leave it. I really have been a bit lazy about exploring this
semester. But, it was the same in Jingzhou--the first semester is
spent figuring out the grocery store, Walmart, and the buses to carry
on with every day life; the second semester I explored a lot,
though--it felt like we walked laps around the old city walls. I
think it will be the same here; now that regular life has settled into
a routine, I'll have the energy to wander.