Getting ready for an eclipse

Feeling lonely on a train...

We wake up at dawn this morning. I get the luggage ready with dad to be well prepared for the train departure. My things ready, I go down for breakfast and then go meet Alem. I get in the car and wait. Then everyone arrives. I notice a new piece of luggage that is like a long tube and dad tells me that Ghazi had the calligraphy delivered. At the station, I pass easily through the luggage inspection, although I notice that all the liquids are taken then mixed to see if we made explosives! After fifteen minutes we leave with our entire luggage and dad is reassured because they didn’t confiscate anything. We go into the train and towards our seats, since it’s not a night train there are no sleeper cars. But we’re not around the same table and we ask two people if they can change places with us. At first they refuse but since the controller helps us, they finally accept. I sit and listen to my iPod Touch. After an hour, a young man comes and speaks English to us and asks us what we would like to eat. Life settles itself in the train: Yang Dong sleeps in his seat, I talk to a young man about basketball, dad and Liu Jia order. Back from lunch, I begin to write while dad goes for a walk in the train. When dad returns, he tells me there’s a Chinese-speaking Indian a few rows behind us and that he’s a student at MIT. I go talk to him and I learn that he doesn’t speak Indian and that he learned Chinese when he was living in Malaysia. At around 16:00 we arrive in Hami and dad suggests to the Indian that he comes with us. He accepts. Dad asks Liu Jia and the Indian to find us a hotel around the train station. In the meantime, he talks with a man in Ouigour and writes down the his name and phone number to find a way of getting to the eclipse. After ten minutes, Liu Jia calls us to say that she found us a hotel. We find ourselves in a room on the 9th floor with a very nice view. Liu Jia comes in our room to organize the rest of the trip. In the end, we decide to take a train from Hami to Xi’an and then a plane to Hohhot. Then we’ll take a train to Xilinhöt where our friend Ayin, who is photographing nomads in Mongolia, will pick us up. Then, dad and Liu Jia go buy the authorizations for the eclipse and I finish my text. When I’m finished writing and they still haven’t returned, I watch the basketball match between Argentina and Serbia. My cousin Roshanak calls me from Paris in the meantime to tell me that they had received the packages we sent from Xi’an and asks about the rest of our trip, which I explain. When the match ends, dad arrives and tells me that the authorizations for all of us are too expensive. So instead of paying 300 Yuan per person, with the help of the driver he met in front of the station, dad rented a mini bus for 300 Yuan to go to another location to watch the eclipse. Since I’m hungry, with dad we go eat soup in front of the hotel and we go in an Internet café to send the text and do the research I want to do. Then, I go back to the room to go to bed since tomorrow we have a day filled with sensations.