{"id":3125,"date":"2015-11-03T12:01:45","date_gmt":"2015-11-03T12:01:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/social.rollins.edu\/wpsites\/letters\/?p=3125"},"modified":"2020-02-05T13:26:41","modified_gmt":"2020-02-05T18:26:41","slug":"kindness-and-unintentional-hitch-hiking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/2015\/11\/03\/kindness-and-unintentional-hitch-hiking\/","title":{"rendered":"Kindness and Unintentional Hitch-hiking"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wow-time really does fly when you’re abroad! In the blink of an eye it’s been a few weeks and I haven’t uploaded any new posts!<\/p>\n

A few weeks back during the last day of our independent travel week,\u00a0two of my friends and I\u00a0woke up, having no idea what the day\u00a0would hold\u00a0for us! All we knew is that we had to be at the Xi’an airport by 8:30PM. The plan for the day was one we were all particularly excited for: Spa Day! It was meant to\u00a0be a relaxing day of hot springs and massages after a week of walking and 1 1\/2 months of living in China. We looked up a natural\u00a0hot springs near Xi’an and traveling there was a lengthy\u00a0adventure in and of itself. We were flying in the wind and asking many locals which way to go. They were all so kind and it was fun to use the Chinese we’d been learning! During this trip I realized I\u00a0had become\u00a0more comfortable speaking Mandarin and more confident in my listening skills. They were certainly put to the test on that day!<\/p>\n

After jumping into an authentic Chinese experience at the hot springs, we knew we had to return to Xi’an, but didn’t know how. We ended up taking inspiration from the old adage “follow the north star” and\u00a0walked down the mountain, westward towards the now-setting sun. [Advice: Keep in mind what direction home is! If you can’t find your way back, you can at least put yourself in the right direction.] In an attempt to find one of the unmarked bus stops,<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Our kind Xi’an friend<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

continued walking until we ran into a middle-aged\u00a0local lady on the\u00a0path who was also waiting for the bus. No more than\u00a010 minutes later, we find ourselves on the way to\u00a0Xi’an,\u00a0literally piled up-my friend was on my lap-and hitchhiking in the back of a local man’s small, private rental car. The kind lady had talked to the nice\u00a0man\u00a0and his driver, telling them about her “American friends” who needed to go to Xi’an, and they helped us out with no hesitation. I would define the\u00a0following 40 minutes of my life as cozy,\u00a0lively and flabbergasting. The five of us talked the entire time, became friends on WeChat and\u00a0were even introduced\u00a0to the nice man’s son,\u00a0who\u00a0lives in Beijing and could show us around if we ever went back.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Piled-up but happy hitch-hikers!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There was a lot of laughter and conversation with some selfies thrown in. We had no idea how far they would be taking us or what other transportation we would take afterwards, but we were together and\u00a0knew\u00a0we were headed in the right direction. Without any requests on our part, they got us onto a bus, which took us to\u00a0an inner-city\u00a0subway stop,\u00a0and helped us pass through the subway during rush\u00a0hour.\u00a0It was like magic! There was no way we would have made it to our plane in time without them; we were the last to board the plane with ten minutes to spare and hadn’t wasted much time getting there from our hotel.<\/p>\n

During that day we used 8 different modes of transportation and probably spoke to at least\u00a040 Chinese native speakers\u00a0(we got really lost a few times)! All three of us found the value in staying positive\u00a0and thinking outside of the box in the confusing moments. We helped and reminded\u00a0one another\u00a0to pull back\u00a0our\u00a0frustration and soak in this day (no pun intended). Our trip could have had a resentful ending but it really turned into\u00a0a remarkable day\u00a0I’ll never forget!<\/p>\n

Chinese words: \u642d\u8f66\u00a0\u00a0 d\u0101ch\u0113\u00a0\u00a0 to hitch-hike<\/p>\n

\u96be\u5fd8\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0n\u00e1nw\u00e0ng\u00a0\u00a0 unforgettable; memorable<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wow-time really does fly when you’re abroad! In the blink of an eye it’s been a few weeks and I haven’t uploaded any new posts! A few weeks back during the last day of our independent travel week,\u00a0two of my friends and I\u00a0woke up, having no idea what the day\u00a0would hold\u00a0for us! All we knew…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":245,"featured_media":3128,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[113,184,296,331,358],"class_list":["post-3125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-shanghai","tag-china","tag-hitch-hiking","tag-shanghai","tag-transportation","tag-xian"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/245"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3125"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3125\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17054,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3125\/revisions\/17054"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}