China: Xi'an

My alarm went off at 0715 and I had to get up, shower, and make sure I was packed to leave for my 6 days/5 night trip to Xi'an and Beijing. I managed to fit everything into my North Face back pack. Shocking. Well, not really, I'll be wearing the same clothes most of the trip. All I have to say is sustainability. Also, we're going about 4 weeks without laundry service on the ship. What is this? Way past being out of clothes. I did some laundry in the sink a few days earlier.

I think I speak for everyone when I say we were not prepared for 3 weeks of winter and cold. I had to layer up.

Tania and I grabbed breakfast then I made sure I had everything. Mason came to the room and got me and we had to be up in the Union at 0830 to leave by 0900. There are 98 people on this trip. So many. They divided us into 3 groups alphabetically. So Sam's in my group. Mason and JD are in different groups. Too bad.

30 minutes on the bus and we were at the airport. Check-in and security were a breeze. China makes it so easy to travel. And the airport was pretty. The architecture continues to amaze me. I met up with Mason and we split some dumplings while we waited an hour for our flight. Our 2 groups, A and B, were on the same flight, and C was on a later flight.

I sat on the plane with Ann Marie and Kevin. I got the window seat and slept for most of the 2 hour flight. They fed us such strange food: a roll, rice, fish, a mini muffin, and random vegetables with tea. I love having tea with everything. I woke up at one point to look out the window and see the mountains. They were gorgeous and dusted with snow. I love seeing the mountains. Then it turned to flatter ground with small cliffs.

Xi'an is westward from Shanghai and north. It's country-esque up this way. Xi'an is a bigger city than I expected.

When we landed we met up with our tour guide. His English name is Prince Albert. Haha. You can laugh at this. They pick the funniest English names for us to call them.

We got a basic tour through the city until we got to an Art Museum. The museum was all Chinese art. Obviously. But they had ceramics, paintings by farmers, paintings on rice paper, paintings on silk, puppets, everything. Some of them were so colorful. The building itself was freezing, open to the outside with no heating. The polar opposite of Japan, where every building was super heated.

We crossed through a big set of double doors into a huge gallery. Women have to cross with their right foot first and men have to cross with their left foot first. If you don't it's bad luck. And if you hit or step on the foot high threshold, your soul remains in a purgatory-like state. There are several of these that I have seen since then.

Inside the gallery we sat at 2 long tables and were taught by our museum tour guide, Rose, how to do calligraphy and make Chinese characters on rice paper. It's more difficult than you'd think. We learned how to write forever, happiness, and I love you. Hopefully I'll be able to manage to bring them home. I'm acquiring so much stuff. And we've only been to 5 of the 13 ports. The paintings in this gallery were gorgeous. They had some awesome black, white, brown, gray horse paintings. Mom, you'd love these.

After the art museum, we headed to the hotel. We're staying at the Jianguo Hotel in Xi'an. It's right in the city. We're alphabetically assigned roommates. I'm with Carson. She's from South Carolina and goes to Clemson, and actually knows my roommate, Tania, from home.

The hotel is way too nice. We each have a queen size bed. There's a nice tv and bathroom. So different than Japan and what we did there with our 4 people in one bed. A nice change.

We grabbed a quick snack and hung out with Wade and Greg. We watched some Japanese opera on tv. Then headed across the street to the ATM.

The driving in China is horrific. No one seems to follow any legitimate rules or pays attention to the lights. No wonder that boy was killed by a drunk driver in Shanghai fall 08. Even the buses are crazy.

We met up on the buses for dinner at 1900. We went to the center of Xi'an to the Drum House. We had dinner inside of all sorts of dumplings. This is what I had been waiting for. We had all sorts of appetizers of peanuts, tofu, greens, etc. More tea. Beer. Then the dumplings started coming out. We'd get a plate of 10 to share. One for each. Chicken, pork, spicy chicken vegetable, sea food, walnut, tomatoe. Walnut and tomatoe were my favorites. Most people were not all about the dumplings and kept complaining. I thought it was all so delicious. And at the end they bring out this soup and serve it with mini dumplings in it. Whoever gets the most at the table is lucky. I ended up with 3, which was the most. Cool.

We decided not to take the bus back and explore around the city. There were little games and street vendors everywhere for the New Year. Everything was lit up. The trees were covered in white and blue lights as if it were Christmas. Also, people fly kites up on this one long string hundreds of yards long. So cool. You buy one and add it on.

I bought 2 jade rings at a little store. When you want to buy anything you barter with the person selling it. You start really low so you don't end up paying an absurd amount of money for things. I ended up paying roughly $5 for the 2 together. They're really pretty. I've never been much of a jade person but it's everywhere. So anyone who's a jade fan: go to China.

We bought candied strawberries from a vendor. They were so sweet and delicious. We wandered around the Bell Tower. From the Bell Tower the city is divided up into quarters.

Sam bought a balloon thing. I wish I knew the name of it. But you write on it and put your wishes and let it fill with air and light the bottom of it and let it fly up into the night sky. If it disappears in the sky it's supposed to be a good sign. Our blue balloon disappeared and we continued.

We only came across one bar. JD was joking about needing to just find a bar sign and we turned around and there was an "American" bar. It was almost completely empty. It was supposedly a jazz bar, but they were playing country music. We got our own secluded booth and ordered drinks. They gave us sunflower seeds and fruit as bar food. Random.

Pictures of Elvis and Michael Jackson were on the walls. A young man played the electric keyboard and sang for a little while. It sounded like J-Pop. Although I'm sure if I said that they'd be offended.


Around 2400 everyone seemed to be headed out and we paid our tabs and left. We were right by one of the city gates. It was all lit up and beautiful. We grabbed a cab back to the hotel. I got back and Carson was already there. We hung out for awhile and went to bed close to 0200.