As the Gong Tolls: Xi'an

The long vacation was a big party but it was just that—long. Go figure. Enjoyable but very tiring to be running to and fro from pavilion to pavilion without a lot of time to recuperate. So it's a little bit of an understatement to say that I was excited for it to be over :)

For breakfast we ate off the street. And by that I do not mean that we literally picked food up off of the roads in Xi’an and put it in our mouths. I hardly like letting my shoes touch the roads here, what were you thinking?? It’s just the term we use to refer to trying food from street-side little vendors. Always cheap and always an adventure. Today was a Chinese hamburger..and let’s just say that the Chinese should leave hamburgers to America ;)

We came back to the hostel and Tiffany told us to have our luggage down to the lobby in an hour. My sunglasses had broken in my backpack so we proceeded to spend the good part of that time doing the following...

We got laughing so hard, oh my goodness it was hilarious! Totally beat packing!

Anna had to give it a try

followed shortly by Debbie

It is actually a lot harder than it looks, I promise. And the facial expressions are totally necessary to get them to stay like that! No joke! We sometimes wonder about our sanity here..

Ahem, anyway, packing..we said goodbye to our friends at the hostel and loaded a bus to the airport! I was a little anxious about flying on a Chinese airline but the airport looked normal enough so that was a good sign. We checked our luggage and waited for our flight, which of course was delayed.

Resume taking funny pictures with sunglass lenses!

Erin’s turn

Joey..haha

Amanda’s is one of the best, I think!

Sometimes it pays to be so easily entertained :) We boarded the plane and we were on our way. I ended up sitting by one of the guys in our group, Ryan, who got his mission call to Taiwan while he was here! *Yay* I informed him of this tendency I have on planes to get motion sickness which sometimes has very negative, and often visible, side effects. I expected him to be understanding but he wasn’t, he was NOT OKAY with the situation and was convinced that I was NOT going to throw up on this flight. Ryan’s a big guy so I was a little surprised that he was so squeamish but oh well, if I couldn’t help it, I couldn’t help it! The flight started out well, nothing too exciting and I was just concentrating with all my might to relax and not let the normal little bumps get to me, because the landings are what make me sick so if I stayed as un-sick as possible until then it would be good, right? I read a little and about..20 minutes before landing I got up to use the bathroom, even though the seat belt sign was on. I knew I had to hold my composure during the landing and having to pee wasn’t a distraction I wanted to deal with. I waiting in line (so awkward on planes..) and used the teeny bathroom and started back to my seat. About halfway there the plane hit a huge patch of turbulence and the whole plane jolted in a downwards direction, making everyone scream and drop a couple of feet. For me out of my seat it was like I walked down a step, it was so scary! I grabbed onto the nearest seat and seriously scrambled to my row, pushily telling Ryan to let me past because if this plane was going down I sure as heck wanted to be in my seat for it! After I had my seatbelt safely on I looked around and saw that one of the Chinese guys across the aisle had been holding his green tea up and when we hit the turbulence it was been thrown at the ceiling and was now dripping over everyone. Hahaha it was so great, a nice little comic relief to a seriously scary situation. I was out of my seat for all of that! I thought of Lost and Charlie in the bathroom when the plane went down..I always think of Lost when I get on a plane..

Then I remembered the lady waiting to use the bathroom after me..and felt sincerely sorry about however that experience went for her. Yikes..

Landing. Ryan was SO determined to distract me to the extent of not vomiting and was just asking me pointless questions that I don’t even remember giving him answers to but it worked, and to both of our relief (mostly his), I didn’t! Success!! There’s hope for the three flights back to the states! We got off the plane and were hit by a wave of humidity. Home sweet home :)

We claimed our luggage and rented a little van to Zhongshan. We’d been looking forward to climbing the four flights of stairs back to our beds for about a week at that point. We unlocked our door and tumbled into our stuffy apartment and it’s times like these that I know I’m actually living in China because this crammed little dorm room felt like home :)

Worst. Night. Ever. But we made it!

Can you blame us for eating breakfast and going straight up to our rooms and sleeping after a night like that? You shouldn’t. Those puffy white sheets, the wooden bunk beds, oh it was Heaven :) We woke up at noon and rode a long series of buses for two-ish hours to see the terra cotta warriors. I was excited to go (but not too hugely) but boy oh boy they over-exceeded my expectations by about 250%. I hadn't expected to geek out as much as I did!

Long story short, one of the Ming emperors was either nervous about the after-life and wanted to feel protected or he thought that his possessions would go with him so he had statues of his army made. Pretty daunting task! All of this was barely found in the seventies!

See for yourself:)

Pit 3, maybe. If you ever go see the terra cotta warriors visit the pits in backwards order because 1 is the most impressive!

Go terra cotta!

Pit 2. Generals and other high-ranked guys

Terra cotta warriors?

My Olympic fixation reaches new heights—a real torch from the Beijing 2008 games!

Pit 1, the biggest and most impressive. The room is as big as an airplane hangar, and I don’t remember how many warriors are in there but there are a lot. They are still being excavated today. Pretty cool :)

Lovin’ the zoom on my Christmas present? Oh yes! Thanks, Dad and Mom :)

Isn’t the detail amazing?? Every warrior is completely unique, even down to the treading on the soles of their shoes.

We rode a bus back to the hostel and by this time I was definitely vacationed out. The sights of the Beijing vacation are amazing but they are tiring- a lot of walking and transportation catastrophes and I’d been fighting a cold all week that I just couldn’t shake. I was more than content going back to the hostel and just chilling for the rest of the night. Some hostels have activities every night and it just so happened that the activity that night was a karaoke/open-mic night of sorts. There was girl playing guitar and singing named Journey from..somewhere that I don’t remember, but she’d been staying at the hostel for a long period of time but was continuing her travels soon. She sang a couple songs, some in Chinese, others in Korean and some in English. It was just the most relaxing atmosphere, listening to music, Shaw was playing some bongos they had there, as people from all over the world checked into the hostel and just contently swaying to the music.

She asked if anyone would sing and somehow I ended up singing “Stand By Me” pretty nastily through my cold but it was worth it when I got a plate full of fresh red strawberries as “payment” for participating. But I jammed with some Chinese people at a hostel in front of people from all over the world. Haha wow! It was such a wonderfully content night. Oh and did I mention there’s a hostel dog?? A brown labradoodle named Teddy..