the moment i knew my mom was not always there to save me

i am really dependent on my mom. like, seriously. she always knows just what to do when i don't. when i am in a rut, she flies in with her supermom cape and saves the day. in high school, we would stay up late at night together working on posters, projects, election campaigns. (she may or may not have taken 100% credit on a few of these.) she packed my lunches, did my laundry. even in college, i talk to her every day, ask her opinion, ask her for a motivational speech before a big test. i'm sure she knows when her caller id says "rachael" that this phone call is screaming "HELP ME."

that's why my semester in china was really good for my independence. i realized, "hey, i can take care of myself!" i learned how to take charge of a situation and fix it without anyone's help. more than once, i had to step up and make decisions when i would normally ask my parents what to do.

well, the true test of my independence came when kindra and i were traveling by ourselves. we had to book train tickets, hostels, flights, all kinds of things that people usually do for me. i did not realize how many little details of traveling we had to take care of. (it gave me appreciation for all the people who normally plan trips for me.)

anyway, kindra and i had planned to spend over a week in yangshuo, the backpacker's mecca of china. we found a little hostel online that looked pretty excellent at $2.16 a night and booked it. we had been on a high for the past few days, doing nothing but stupid 19-year-old things and just loving out reckless little lives.

we got to yangshuo and the high was sucked out of us like a dementor's kiss.

side note: kindra and i love hostels. LOVE them. there's something about the laid back feeling, the awesome people you meet that would not otherwise meet in a secluded hotel room, the unknown of who your bunkmates are going to be. and if it's abnormally gross? we take it as a challenge.

but this was so past gross, it flew to the sun and back and then did cartwheels around gross. it was a compilation of a few rooms that literally sat inside the mountain, only accessible through a dark, stony, narrow alley. there was laundry drying on the front desk, but already had a fresh coat of dirt on it due to the roofless reception area. mold oozed out of the cracks in the walls and water dripped on the already-slippery steps.

we put our bags in our room and went into town, neither stating the obvious to the other, pretending it was all part of the adventure. later, while getting in bed having met none of our suite mates, a scandinavian man silently crawled into bed next to us. we gave each other weak smiles that said "yeah, there's a scandinavian man in our room, but that's what you get with a hostel." plus, there were three other beds, we weren't going to be alone with him. oh, don't worry, we weren't: a drunk chinese man and two drunk australian men stumbled in and collapsed on the floor, giggling and shouting.

i. was. petrified. two girls and four grown men, three of which were smashed out of their minds. i thought i would die. if not here, then in the creepy, secluded alley. i seriously have never been so terrified in my life. i didn't know what to do. kindra and i went to the main desk to see if we could switch rooms. the receptionist wasn't there. he later told us he was at the bar next door all night and apologized profusely.

i wanted my mom. i wanted to go home and cuddle with her and have her validate me on how scary it is to sleep next to three foreign drunks. but she was not there. i fell asleep, exhausted from worry.

the next morning, we sluggishly walked outside, fell into sticky plastic chairs, and just stared at each other. we can't stay here. i didn't know where to go, though. we'd already paid for our room and weren't sure how to find something else. we were not familiar with the city nor the language. i was so single-minded in the idea that i needed someone- an adult- to tell me how to do this, to tell me how people normally handle situations like this, to guide me like a marionette on a string, that i did not realize that i am an adult. i take responsibility for me. if i do not want to stay in a hostel, i find a way out.

so i told kindra to pack our things. i marched to the front desk. i asked to be put on the phone with the owner and then firmly told him we wanted our money back and would not be staying there anymore. we stood outside, suitcases in hand, at a loss for where to go next. we remembered that a girl we had met a few days earlier in guilin had told us about her plans to go to yangshuo and the hostel she was staying in. we walked around and asked businesses where this hostel was. we boldly borrowed phones and made calls. after hours of searching, we found the "showbiz inn." there were exactly two beds available for 7 nights. we took them.

that night, we slept comfortably in a room with two cute british girls and, coincidentally, the american girl who told us about the hostel. when i woke up, i went upstairs to the roof, where there was free breakfast and a sweeping view of arguably the prettiest landscape in the world. it was not in a cave. there was not mold on the walls. i realized i could take care of myself...and it felt good.