We have no idea how to pronounce the name of the place we came to today. Even after asking multiple people and listening to recordings, we just mumble it and hope for the best.

The day was quite uneventful. Typical hotel breakfast, pack up, taxi to train station, and 2.5 hour bullet train to a new place. Like all trains we’ve taken here, we zoomed past gigantic apartment blocks that seemed like they are in the middle of nowhere but probably have the population of most US mid-sized cities.

When we arrived we couldn’t figure out the address of our hotel, and therefore couldn’t paste it into the rideshare app. This kicked off an annoying afternoon of not being able to find our hotel. We taxied to where we thought it was and after being dropped off with all our stuff quickly learned it definitely was not there. Then we realized it was in a whole separate town, called another taxi, and got dropped off at a hotel 45 minutes away. Then we realized that that was the wrong hotel. We walked 15 minutes to the right hotel but couldn’t find the reception desk. I hope what Millie takes from experiences like these are that her parents are resilient mortals trying to figure things out, just like her. What she will probably take from it is that she was born to two idiots. She was confused and annoyed when we couldn’t get it right. “Why can’t you just put it on the map?!”

It is foggy / smoggy here but from our hotel we can see the famous “Avatar mountains” that this area is known for. We’re going to visit them tomorrow. I plan on waking up at 5am to go full cosplay and a na’vi.

We walked out for an early dinner and went to a local place that was highly rated on Dianping, which is like Chinese Yelp. I chose a pork dish and Nick chose… giant salamander. We weren’t sure if it was a bad translation or actual giant salamander, but it turns out it was AGS. This man is incapable of seeing something weird on a menu and then just letting it go. It was actually pretty good.

Both were too spicy for Millie so we ordered some scrambled eggs for her. When they arrived they were 60% chili peppers/40% eggs, so she ate plain white rice for dinner and three oranges for dessert. I am excited to get to Japan to have a break from the spice and grease here in China.