I now have a warning with the Chinese government

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Today we woke up and packed for the drive to Hong Kong. We loaded all of our stuff on the bus and then 10 minutes later we were at the boarder to Hong Kong were we had to fill out immigration papers, drag all our stuff off the bus, go through customs, load everything. 2 minuets later we were at the next customs stop, we unloaded all our luggage, again dragged it through and loaded it back up. Another 2 minutes we were at another stop! Unloaded and had drag our stuff though again and fill out papers. This was the most inefficient process I have ever dealt with in the entire world. We already taken note to the inefficiencies in China but this was ridiculous. During this last process they took my passport, looked at it, looked at me, told me I’d over stayed my visit and then called over another customs officer. They pulled me aside outside the room where Brian was also sitting. We were the only two in the entire group who were pulled out and they took our passports and documents. We talked for a little bit and I went over to our professor to ask him what was going on. Our professor told me that we had only 30 day visas and we’d overstayed our visit in China while the rest of the group had 60 day visas. This was a problem since we were on day 32. Being the smart ass I am, I walked back with sad puppy eyes to tell Brian the bad new. “Brian, we have over stayed our visa by 2 days professor said, and now we are in trouble with the government and they are going to put us in Chinese jail until they can get new visas from the American embassy.” Brian was looking at me with the ‘you’ve got to be shitting me’ look on his face while our professor, hearing everything I’d said to Brian, came running over laughing saying “no! no! no!” and told Brian the truth. I tried to hush the professor but no such luck, he’d ruined my fun.

After an hour of sitting there with Brian and I talking about how we were fine with getting shipped home at this point and trying to figure out what was going to happened to us, the officials came in. Since we were in a group of students and it wasn’t that big of a deal since we were studying, they were going to let us off with a warning. We had to sign some papers saying that we understood that we’d overstayed our welcome and then we had to write a statement. Our statement was “I am sorry I overstayed 2 days” signed and dated. Lol. It was being in second grade all over again, just a slap on the wrist.

Laughing about the whole thing, Brian and I got back onto the bus with everyone to continue on to Hong Kong. Tired, I passed out on Randy who was sitting next to me for the entire ride.

Once we go to the hotel and checked in, a few of us went out to this hole in the wall Chinese restaurant for our last meal in China. Afterwards, we went back to the hotel to take a short nap. There was a street of vendors that opened up at 5pm so Missy and I planed to meet in the lobby at 4:45 to get in some quality shopping. I didn’t see her downstairs so I started walking to the market when I got distracted…by Starbucks! Coffee in hand, I made it to the market and started shopping! I ran into Missy a short while later and she had run and didn’t make it down the to the lobby before I left. We did a crap load of shopping and bought new suitcases to bring all our new toys and such home.

We ran back to the hotel for a quick shower since our last night as a group was going to be spent taking a river boat cruise to view the Hong Kong skyline. I love Hong Kong at night. We ended up leaving the hotel late and we made it down to the waterside. We took the subway and as soon as we came up, I looked around (like a groundhog) and realize that everything looked very familiar. A few stepped later I looked across the street and recognized the Holiday Inn my father and I had stayed at 2 years ago!! I was pretty psyched and all the great memories came rushing back. Good times.

We got down to the water and I started taking a million pictures with a few of my friends. The next thing we knew the entire group was gone. I went one direction to see if they had gone there and when I got back to where my friends should have been, they weren’t! I spent the next half hour wondering around the place trying to find the group and finally found them! I was so scared that I was going to have to spend the last night by myself.

We had cake to thank our professors for an amazing trip and we all reminisced on the good times. We then took our river cruise and then it was off from there. We decided to have a classy night so that’s what we had. (see the rest on tomorrows blog)

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