Xi'an

At the train station, Mao Da and I met up with Jenny, who was talking with the travel agency person because he needed her help to talk to foreigners. We met a family from Chapel Hill, NC! On the train ride to XI'AN, we tried to play some cards, then we got into the hand slapping game. One of my fingers felt dislocated for a while, but it eventually got better. After Mao Da went to sleep, Jenny and I broke out her sketchpad, and drew random things. Then I taught her the Korean alphabet. And then we finally went to sleep. Oh yeah, after we went to sleep, she stayed up a bit until her mom got home for lunch to look at her AP scores. In the morning we arrived in Xi'an, and from the train station the receiving travel agent took us to the tour bus area for the East Line. 

First thoughts: Xi'an was a much smaller city than I imagined. It was the most visibly polluted city so far, and its streets were narrow...Everything paved with those black rocks/bricks. 

We realized the tour we signed up for was 散客, which means each day of the tour was with a different group of people. Thus, the day we arrived (19th) was on the East Line tour. Our tour guide was...interesting. I call her the vampire lady...she's really pale, with blonde/yellow hair, her eyebrows were shaved off and tattooed brown, and she wore lots of makeup but had wrinkles around her eyes. Anyways, she seemed really pissed off the whole day at this Muslim couple. The driver was had an argument with the wife or something...lots of drama. For dinner we had Xi'an's famous 羊肉泡馍 with those rice starch pieces or whatever. we went to PartyWorld that night. So expensive. @__@. 

On the 20th we took the West Line tour, and had dumplings at the famous dumpling place near Drum Tower for dinner. The next day was raining, but we went to climb Huashan...It was crazy...so slippery...at the end of the day, my shoes were soaked and stinky, and I had a bruise on my back from slipping (it took like a week to go away @___@). After getting changed, we went to Huiminjie to get some food. We ate at 3 different places I think. Kabobs, Xiaolongbao, and something else...I forgot...Then we got some dragon whisker candy, which was so fun to play with. 

The next day was a day inside the city: basically climbing the city wall, etc. It was kinda drizzly. Then we walked around the shopping area for a while, and then went to the travel agency to pick up our luggage, get some McD's, and then hop on the train back to BEIJING. On the train, Mao Da sat in a different car from us, so Jenny and I just sat there eating McD's and talking with the person across from us. At first he stared at us for the longest time when we spoke English. We were totally creeped out, and thus spoke in Spanish. Then we found out his daughter's actually at NYU, but he lives in China. There were also a lot of Koreans on the train, so we had fun listening to them xD. Later, we went to Mao Da's car and hid behind the door (his bed was on the top row, at the end of the car), and pulled on his blanket. The first time, he tugged it back. We did it again, and tugged more furiously, and then started sitting up. Jenny and I quickly hid behind the door, but Jenny started laughing. After waiting a while, we peeked to see if he was lying down again, but no he was still sitting up staring back at us xD. He thought his blanket was falling at first...until he heard Jenny laughing from around the corner. At night Jenny and I talked about Christianity, and random stuff, and ghost stories. Also there was a Korean guy chatting with a Chinese guy about religion...and Jenny and I wondered if we should've joined the conversation.