Recycled email to Dad

Yo pops,

Update - I am still alive and in good health.  I think this is a small miracle! Ha. We're in Dalian plotting our next move, as we are low on money and China is low on train tickets.  Yesterday we spent all day, 13 hours, sitting in an uncomfortable seat surrounded by so many people in the aisles that it was nearly impossible to get to the toilet.  Also we were definitely the ONLY foreigners on the train (possibly in Harbin at all) and people are just so bamboozled by our presence that we have to like talk to all these people.  Also people are allowed to smoke on the train, so it was hot and disgusting. It's not that the distance between our destination and departure cities was so big, but that the train freaking crawled and spent half an hour sitting at every stop along the way.  Also we were kind of expecting the train to have a dining car, since it was you know, 13 hours, so the only food we brought was a loaf of bread and an orange juice and some peanuts, but of course it didn't, and so halfway through the trip we were starving. We only got those train tickets because, after we waited in line at the train ticket window for half an hour in Harbin (which sounds simple but is actually an ordeal, with the amount of people in the station), we were informed that there were no tickets to Dalian left (and we were buying them two days in advance), so the next day we went over to the place where people are returning tickets they don't want, and joined the hoards of people shouting at each other until we found a lady returning two hard-seat daytime tickets to Dalian, which we bought off of her. LOL.  So the day after tomorrow we're going to try to get to Nanjing but we might end up being stuck here for a few days. Dunno.  There is not any English happening up here, as I think Western tourists don't normally come to these parts, and people seem to just assume we speak great Chinese, the way they spew out information to us at an average pace.  And then they seem confused when I say, "sorry, I didn't understand." They're probably like, "what the hell are you doing in Dalian if you don't speak perfect Chinese?"  Or maybe, "what the hell are you doing in the Northeast during Chinese New Year? We don't have time to deal with your language inadequacies right now!" Yeehaaaaw.  Me and C do not hate each other yet, either, but I seem to already have entered the bitterness-and-nagging phase of the relationship and we are starting to have the we-can't-actually-be-together-in-the-future conversations, so you can just chill out and worry about something else for a while.  

Also the ice stuff in Harbin was really crazy cool.  I have a lot of pictures.  It was really freaking cold though so we couldn't actually linger over the cool stuff as long as one should to fully appreciate it.  Before I knew I was coming to China I watched an Anthony Bourdain episode, I think with Canaan, where he goes to Harbin and I was like, dude, sweet, I should go there.  Then...I went there.  

Love,

Z