Ah, the anticipated blog post about China…
Honestly, I didn’t even know where to begin with this post which is just a reflection of how scattered and chaotic the whole month was. But, here is me best attempt:
Before actually being able to go into China, we had to go through the process of applying for Visas to China while in Mongolia. Recently, the process to apply for a Chinese Visa has changed in Mongolia and it complicated a lot of things for our squad as many teams had to go to different cities where they didn’t have easy access to the Chinese Embassy. Fortunately, my team stayed in the capitals the whole time— Ulaanbaatar.
Wall #1– Visa Process
Step 1– Stand in line, outside of the Chinese Embassy, in … weather on a Tuesday from 9-12pm to get a ticket number. We got to the Embassy at 7:50am and didn’t get in until 11:55am and only HALF of our team made it in…
Step 2– The half of the team that made it in on Tuesday, comes back on the following Wednesday, Friday, or Monday with an appointment. My half was on Monday (so we had to wait another 6 days). While the other half that didn’t make it in on Tuesday comes back the NEXT Tuesday to get the ticket number.
Step 3– Show up to appointment with all necessary documentation that was reviewed at the last appointment. We showed up at 8am and quickly realized our appointment time didn’t matter because we didn’t get in until 10am. We also had one of our teammates pulled aside for questioning. She handled it like a champ 😉
Step 4– Go to the bank and pay for your Visa application. With the budget we had, we could only afford to wait another 4 days to have our passports returned to us.
Step 5– Go pick up your passport and hope you were approved! Half of my team was approved for their passports on September 30th while the other half got theirs on September 4th. Out of the 5 teams, my team was the only team who was able to get all of their passports approved in time to leave for China when we were supposed to— beginnings of September. One other team had to leave a teammate behind in Kazakhstan because their Visa was denied. No worries, that person stayed with a squad leader and hung out with other teams. Other teams followed suit a week, two weeks after ours. We thought it was the Lord’s favor on our team…boy, oh, boy…were we in for a surprise
Wall #2– Lodging
Our team had booked lodging online shortly after our last half had their Visas approved and we were ready to go so on Friday, September 6th, we were ready to go and got on a train toward the border to China. We boarded our fun little 4:30pm sleeper train and soon realized that our lodging had fallen through…yeah, you read that right, but, we thought, we’ll figure it out as we get there. We arrived at the border around 7:30am on the 7th. As soon as we got off the train, a woman, who spoke English, approached us and offered us help to get across the border. So, after being transported to the Mongolian border and waiting for the gates to open at 9:30am, we made our way to the Chinese border and went through Chinese Immigration Control by 11:45am.
A sweet man from Mongolia approached us and offered seats on a big bus he was traveling on that was headed toward Beijing— the capital of China. So, I stead of trying to figure out how we were going to get to the bus station, we took the opportunity to get on the bus!
12 hours later by bus and we had made our way to Beijing…at 2:30am. And our bus wasn’t pulled over at a bus station, rather on the side of a random road… And I always forget how grateful I am for McDonald’s overseas until moments like this. Our team decided to get off the bus, and IMMEDIATELY, white vans pulled over by the bus to offer us rides. I swear there had not been a single car along the roads until we got off. And we made our way to a local McD’s since our lodging had fallen through. And that is where we lived for a few hours. McDonald’s and a local Starbucks. Our goal was to find WiFi and find some lodging. Things like this happen all the time on the Race and I, as the alumni, am thinking, “It’s cool. We’ll just find lodging elsewhere and we’ll figure it out. Worst case scenario, we stay overnight at McDonald’s for one more night while we wait for a hostel, AirBnB, or something to accept our booking. Right?” Wrong…kinda…
We quickly realized that hostels, AirBnBs, and affordable hotels were denying us left and right…
Stay tuned for more!!!
I am still in need of your help to wrap up my time as an Alumni Team Leader through December! I only need $3,530 to be fully funded before coming back to Ohio!
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