"I'm Sha-Sha-Shakin"

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I got back super early yesterday morning from our weekend trip to Tai Shan! I've been told that I've been saying "incredible" too much, and using too many superlatives in general, so I'll try to cut down, but that'll have to be after I describe this past weekend.
We knew it was going to be fun the moment we boarded the overnight train that left from Shanghai at about 10pm and arrived in Tai Shan at 5:30 am. The kind of sleeper we took is called a rough sleeper (although the English translations of the Chinese signs say "rigidty sleeper") and on the way there we were really lucky that all 60 or so of us on the program were in the same car. Each car was split into segments with 6 bunks - 2 top, 2 middle and 2 bottom. I was really excited about getting a top bunk on the way there, although you know I really regretted it in the morning when we were awakened at about 5am and I had to climb down from the thing. We were so excited when we first got on the train - a bunch of us climbed up to the luggage racks and were just sitting on them and we took a ton of pictures. Very few people actually went to sleep, and for most of the ride we had two games going - one was the "country game" where each person says a country and the next person has to say a country that starts with the last letter, and the other was an alternative version of the country game, the "bands game" which was pretty much the same thing but we were naming different bands. Needless to say, I was playing the music version. Although they turned the lights off at 11pm, we kept playing, and I finally got into my top bunk a little before 2am. I tried to go to sleep but my friend Shana who was in the top bunk next to mine was snoring pretty loudly cause she was sick, but I think I slept for maybe 3 hours max before they turned on the lights and we were being told we'd have 3 minutes to get off the train, and we were looking out of the windows at Tai Shan and could still see the moon.
As soon as we got there, a bus took us to our hotel, which had a big golden buddha statue in the lobby. Although it was a "4 star" hotel, none of the elevators were working so we had to take the stairs. As I was climbing the stairs, I knew it was only the beginning of what was going to be a reaaaaallllly long day of climbing stairs, because in less than 2 hours, we'd be at the base of the Tai Shan Mountain, and we'd have to climb something like 6,600 stairs in order to get to the peak. Although we didn't get a chance to take a nap or catch up on sleep before we began our big hike, we did get to eat breakfast. It was my first chance to eat breakfast at a Chinese hotel and I didn't know what to expect, but I was hoping it wasn't just lunch served as breakfast. Anyway, I was so excited to find a huge breakfast buffet, including rolls & bread-y things and scallion pancakes, and as you can see, I filled up on carbs, as well as fruit and more carbs, being rice. And I drank orange juice and Chinese tea and two glasses of coffee, so I was pretty pumped and ready to go for the day.
The first thing I did when we got to the base of the mountain was buy disposable cameras; previously I had been freaking out that my camera was broken, and although I finally managed to locate a repair shop in Shanghai, they told me it wouldn't be ready until after the weekend, and I was basically devastated that I may not have the opportunity to capture one of China's most beautiful mountains on camera. But now I filled 3 disposable cameras with pics, so although it might take until I get back to the states to develop them, I'll have something concrete to remember it by. Before we began the climb, we were told that we'd have two options - one was to climb the entire way up, and the other was to climb for the first two hours, at which point we'd reach a Gondola station, and we could then take the Gondola up to the mountain's peak. They also told us that our hike would involve mainly a "hike" up a ton of stairs, rather than a trail up the side of the mountain. No one ever likes climbing stairs if they don't have to, so that part was a little disappointing. When we were first told our options, I was thinking that I'd definitely want to climb all the way to the top, no question about it. But I discovered pretty quickly that the hike was going to be a lot harder than I'd thought. The first obstacle we were focused on was the weather - we'd been prepared for Tai Shan to be very cold, and before we left, many of us went out and bought lots of extra layers including long underwear, and fake north face jackets from Shanghai's fake market. Even the guide books said that no matter what season you were climbing during, the mountain was likely to be cold and pretty windy, especially at the top. I've also learned from my first month in Shanghai that I had being cold and under-dressed, so I always prefer to wear more layers rather than less. So that morning after I had consulted my roommate for the trip, Katie, we decided to wear long underwear under our jeans, and on top I was wearing a tank top, a t-shirt, a sweatshirt, a North Face fleece and was carrying another jacket in my backpack in case of rain.
Well as it turned out, even at 9:30 am, it was a really really nice day (especially by Tai Shan standards), maybe even the warmest day we've had so far since I've been in China, and within the first 20 minutes, most of us had shed all of our layers and were down to our t-shirts. Even so, with the combination between the climbing and the weather, the amount that we were all sweating was incredible (there I go using "incredible" again to describe everything, but it really was!) It wasn't long until Katie and I stopped at one of the restrooms along the way and changed out of our long underwear entirely. We then continued on, and I was pretty surprised at the difficulty of the climb so far. A little ways into it, I even got out my asthma inhaler and used it, and it helped some. But I was also kind of glad that the mountain was posing a challenge, too, cause that's what my experience in China has been all about. When we reached the Gondola mid-way point, Kelly, Katie and I were all not totally convinced that we wanted to continue to climb the rest of the way, as we originally planned. We all agreed that if any of us had wanted to take the Gondola up, probably we all would have, but in the end we looked at each other and decided to just continue on, and I'm so, so glad we did!
The next part up was really nice and peaceful - it was more of a path and a lot less stairs, and we kept stopping to take pictures what seemed like every few steps. There were tons of places where Chinese characters appeared painted on rocks and trees, etc, and we stopped and posed next to a bunch of those. After another hour, the mountain peak started to come into view, and we could see a big red Chinese building on the very top, which was clearly our goal. Except the stairs leading up to it looked incredibly foreboding, as they were incredibly steep and ridiculously close together. We kept having to stop more and more frequently, and we knew that we were far enough along that we had no other choice but to keep going, but it really seemed like the mountain was teasing us. Stopping at each of the landings did have its advantages though - each time, the view kept changing. At first, the view in front of us, towards the peak of the mountain, was astounding, but as we got closer and looked back at what we had just climbed, the view beneath us became more and more breathtaking (I can't wait till I have pictures to support this!)
There have been more than a handful of moments since I've been here, and I remember having this same experience when I first went to Texas, where I just stop and look around me and think, "wow, now I really feel like I'm in China." And climbing up Mount Tai Shan was one of them. It's sort of what I expected I would be doing when I came to China, and the mountain had such a different feel than the limited hiking I've done, or mountains I've seen in the states. It might be what Li Laoshi (one of our teachers) said on the bus to us as an introduction to Tai Shan - that climbing mountains is a spiritual experience for the Chinese, as the opposite of the government is the mountains, so Chinese retreat to the mountains to get away from the government, the cities, and anything else associated with it. I also couldn't help thinking about China's loooonnng history and how far back China's past extends, and the fact that this mountain is a part of its past and its history, and has been climbed for thousands of years, and it was so cool that I got to be a part of it.
We knew we were really nearing the top when we could suddenly see Lei (another of our program directors) jumping up and down from the top and waving a CIEE flag at us, and we all thought we had never seen Lei look that excited. We made it, panting and sweating, through our last stretch (although we weren't nearly as vocal as a Chinese man who passed us as he was on our way down, and was screaming, or a Chinese woman who was also on her way up and was making noises as if she were in labor!) and then posed for victory photos at the top. The best was of Dave, who we got as he was "crawling" up the very last steps. It was great!
We met the others and had lunch at the very peak, and then it was time to make our way down. It seemed that nearly everyone took the Gondola down and then got on the bus that was waiting for them, but I found myself stuck in a small group of hardcore people who planned to walk back all the way down. That was really not something I planned on, or was interested in, but I went along with it in typical Sarah fashion, grumbling and pouting during the first and extremely steep part down. The way down was hard, too, but in a different way - I could really feel it in my knees, and I had to be careful that I was looking down the entire time and paying attention to every single step. The two trips to the bathroom that were also necessary in the trip down were also extremely trying - Tai Shan had some of the most disgusting squatters I have yet to experience, and on more than one occasion I really thought I wouldn't be able to go through with it. I think probably the most funny thing my mom convinced me to bring from home were my 6 or 7 packs of toilet seat covers. Toilet seats, hah, I wish! Some of these squatters were literally just holes in the ground, no running water, no individual stalls, and there's no other way to say this than to say that there was just shit all over the place. After that, now I know I can REALLY do anything. Really, I'm not kidding. (Haha, and kelly accidentally dropped her backpack in one of them, and people could hear her scream from outside!) I realize this is a tangent, but an important tangent...
So anyways, we're still on our way down. And as we were getting closer to the bottom, I think everyone was getting annoyed with me because I couldn't stop repeating my chorus of "oh my god guys, really, this is a really big accomplishment." And, "I'm really so proud right now." And, "wow, this is really an incredible experience." And I couldn't help myself, because...it was!
So now I can say I was one of the hardcore ones who climbed UP AND DOWN Tai Shan, it took maybe 6 or 7 hours and I'm really proud of it! And, I'm also pretty guaranteed now that I'm going to live to be 100....
That night I was exhausted, after we went to dinner, I went back to my room and took a "nap" that could have been my sleep for the night, but then my roommate katie woke me in quite possibly the nicest way I've ever been woken at like 10 at night and we went down to hang out in someone's room where we were all playing cards, etc, but then I went back to sleep and we had to wake up pretty early again the next morning for our tour of Confucius's home town, etc. Probably the most memorable part was going to the graveyard, which was beautiful, and seeing these three huge mounds, which we were told were the mounds containing Confucius's grandfather, father, and himself. However, we were also told that during the Cultural Revolution (under Mao), the Red Guards dug up the mound supposedly containing Confucius's body and didn't find anything.....oh, the Cultural Revolution, what didn't they do?!
We had some free time later that afternoon, and after taking a quick walk around the Tai Shan Night Market by our hotel, we came back to the hotel lobby pretty early, and Santana, me, Shana and Justin started to play a game of Mah Jong. It was my second time playing and I love it (probably because I won my first game, beginner's luck, not to mention that it was an open-hand game, and I still don't understand all of the rules, but still). It was really fun as we were playing, because we're told that any time Americans start playing Mah Jong, you're automatically going to attract a crowd of Chinese people, and sure enough we did. It was fun and also kind of embarassing, cause at least me and Shana had no idea what we were really doing, and they were advising us and basically started to play for us, but it was another Chinese cultural experience....
we didn't get to finish our game cause we had to leave for our night train home. It was a little different from the train ride there because this time we weren't all in the same car, but were split up between 3 or 4 cars, and when we heard that, we immediately thought how sorry we felt for the Chinese people on our train, who had to try to get to sleep with a bunch of loud Meiguoren on their train. As it turned out, the bed I was given was in a bunk with three other Chinese people, and at first I was scared and didn't want to sleep on the top bunk next to a Chinese guy, but Mason switched with me and I got to sleep on the bottom bunk, but it didn't matter anyway, cause we started to play Mafia, and even when they turned off the lights and we had to be as quiet as possible, our games got even more intense and we continued to play Mafia until 2:30 in the morning, when we got about 3 hours of sleep before we arrived back in Shanghai.
And it was a weird feeling, because I was definitely really excited to come back home! And now we've been in Shanghai a full month, and there's nothing like leaving and coming back to get that feeling like you're returning home. It was so nice to be on the bus back to the apartments and start to recognize our neighborhood and I couldn't wait to get back into my bed, which I got into and slept for most of the next day (once I got in, I literally could not get back out, because my legs were so sore that I can not even begin to describe how sore they were cause there are just no words, and now, 3 days later, walking down stairs is still incredibly painful. But, I'm still looking forward to climbing another mountain soon....). And that is a summary of the weekend. I have more culture shock stuff to write, but gonna have to save that for the next entry...

PS - If you're wondering, the title of this entry is from the Rooney song which I personally consider my anthem from this trip, as it's the song that Kelly and I would always listen to on all of the bus trips right before we got to our destination. And while we're on the topic of songs, at one point we were listening to the Eagles' Take it Easy, and when I heard these lyrics:

"We may lose and we may win though
we will never be here again
so open up, I'm climbin' in,
so take it easy"

I was struck by how much they epitomize my mindset, for the weekend trip at least, and pretty much for how I feel about being in China in general, particularly the line "we will never be here again." And with that in mind, I'm really trying to do it all, and take in as much as I can, because I'm here now and this is really it.
It's March 20th (or now March 21st), and we've officially been here now for a month and 2 days!!

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