10-24
It was raining on my first full day in Xi'an. I got up and had a nice breakfast in the cafe, chatted it up with a few fellow travelers, and caught up on email. The internet here seems to be faster than in Beijing. I took a shower, dropped off some laundry, and signed up for the Terra Cotta warriors tour for the next day. Next I made an attempt to check out the city by foot. This was more a partial victory than a complete failure. I ended up going back to the Muslim district because I knew there were tunnels I could walk in (to hide from the rain) and I knew there was good street food there. It was kind of a failure because I turned back after I finished my street food, which was some sort of crepe-like pastry that was stuffed with vegetables and then fried in a wok.
I enlisted Pieter to join me on part two of my walking adventure. We headed to the East street to check out a foreign language bookstore I had looked up on the internet so I could get a Chinese Dictionary. I can't rely on accessing Google Translator when I'm in a train with no internet, so I want a good dictionary. I chose the one with good English Phoenetic pronunciation (despite not having the mandarin characters). After the bookstore we scuttled back to the hostel because we were wet and cold and wanted the cheap beers they sold during happy hour.
10-25
Today I took a tour to see the Terra Cotta warriors with the hostel. Our tour guide completely made our tour--her name was Jia Jia, and she was "26 and single UH", as she would say, with heavy emphasis, again and again. She attempted to give us the history and education as we walked throughout the tombs, but it was mostly lost between the accent and quirky mannerisms, which, to be honest, was probably the best way to have it. In a way, it made the group more sociable. I met a couple from Santa Cruz there, and they gave me some good tips about checking out this mountain used for the floating rocks in Avatar--I'm so there. So yea, the terra cotta guys--totally cool, but up close they are not as impressive as the History Channel makes them seem. Still cool, but more in the line of a B list artist.
We stopped for lunch with the group on the way back. Jia Jia gave us education on the food as well. It didn't make it taste any better but it was more entertaining. The power was out at our hostel when we got back. The government was doing "tests", so we hung out in the cafe and had tea by candlelight and discussed among other things, Kombucha, Kung Fu, and Vanilla Cake.
I ventured out on my own for dinner that night, but it was so cold that I ducked into a Starbucks first, where I ran into Alex from Canada, who was on my tour earlier today (but from a different hostel) with her friend from Australia. I hung out with them for a bit, where we decided to go back to my hostel and hang out at our bar, but only after I found myself some street food in the muslim quarter. I had some sandwich with lamb skewers that were rained on by a red pepper thundercloud. Then we went back to the bar, which was nice.
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