Overslept...

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After writing the blog last night, I had a shower, had dinner and went to bed at about 9pm, with my alarm set for 6 the next morning so I had plenty of time to get my train tickets, check out of the hostel by midday and see a little of Beijing. Going to bed at 9pm had its own problems, notably that young people are usually preparing to go out at 9pm, so the corridor outside my room was noisy. No problem, I put in earplugs to let me sleep and dropped off fairly quickly. Genius.

NO! NOT GENIUS! I woke up to the sounds of people moving about in the corridor (one earplug had fallen out), looked at my clock and saw that it was 12 already - my alarm of course makes noise and I had earplugs so i wouldn't have heard it go off. A very sick feeling rose in my stomach - I had to be out of my room NOW, there may be no train tickets for Yantai left, and even if there was the station would once again be crowded by Chinese who would push me out of the way. I dressed very quickly, packed my bags thoroughly and feeling sick with worry and horribly unprepared because I'd left some things for the next day when I went to bed, thinking I'd have plenty of time. As I grabbed my passport and money from the desk by the window, I opened the curtain to see what the weather was like.

Pitch darkness.

Confused, I went to look out the windows that opened out from the corridor. Darkness. Maybe they weren't real windows?

I went to the front door, which was at this point unmanned. Darkness.
It suddenly dawned on my poor tired brain. It wasn't midday, it was midnight. No wonder my hair was still wet. And people being up at midnight isn't unusual.

I got back to bed after managing to calm down a little, feeling silly but very relieved.

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Comments

[anonymous]

hi
you are a good story-teller.i will visit your blog a lot.