Bad times

I'm sitting in the hotel in Chengdu right now. Why? I have no idea. I should be hiking the Himalayas and half the way into becoming a sherpa right now. Unfortunately, I'm sitting in here in the Detroit of China (just kidding, its actually a really cute city full of pandas...pandas pandas pandas) watching my dad watch TV (watching us?).

What was supposed to happen on our way to Tibet was an overnight train to Beijing for a day and a night, followed by a flight to Lanzhou in Gansu province for three days, and then an overnight train to Lhasa. What happened instead was 1. Missed our flight to Lanzhou and had to buy another ticket, 2. Missed our train to Lhasa and had to buy a plane ticket from Xian to Chengdu to Lhasa instead 3. Realized that we needed original copies of our approval by the (sic) Everything is Super (sic) Tourism Bureau of Tibet and thus missed our flight to Lhasa and had to buy another ticket, finally followed by 4. Sitting in a hotel watching my dad watch the TV watch us. How the hell did we only hit 1 out of 3? Determination and guts.

Anyways this whole fiasco has been 太腐败了 (which means too corrupt...originally meant to refer to the government, its now used in every day language for everything, from a bad situation to taking your friends out to a good meal)...but as they say, Sherpas Never Give Up. And damned if we do. Its now or never (or, like a year). Its Tibet or bust.