Just got back from my weekend trip to Xi'an. It was such a fun weekend! On Friday, I had to run home after class to pack my stuff and then dashed over to the supermarket to buy some snacks for the trip in case there wasn't time to eat at the train station before we left. After a flurry of running around, I finally ended up on the bus for the ride to the train station. Sadly club sign ups were on Friday and I didn't have time to stop and sign up for anything since I was in such a rush to get ready for the trip.

The Train and Xi'an Day 1:

The train station was chaos. We were divided into smaller groups and assigned to a teacher who would be leading us through the station. We ended up at our station early, so there was time to get food and relax. Our group definitely got a lot of stares from other people and had quite a few who were trying (not to successfully ) to discretely take pictures of us. After a while we finally go to board the train. We had soft sleeper tickets for the overnight train to Xi'an. Despite the name of the ticket, the beds are not that soft. They are just as hard as my bed in the global village (which I'm actually starting to like. I've been sleeping a lot better on it). Each person is assigned to 1 berth, for the soft sleeper, there are 4 beds per berth and I think about 10 berths per car. I was assigned to a berth with one of my classmates and 2 random people. They weren't very friendly. We tried talking to them, but no luck. The one woman had a ton of luggage and it pretty much filled up all the floor space of the berth. We were stuck waiting for her to rearrange all of her stuff so we could even get into the berth. Both of them seemed unhappy that we showed up....I dont think they wanted to have to sleep on the top bunks. Misha and I just relaxed in our room for most of the trip. We only ventured out for a little because it was Anthony's birthday. Elliot joined us in our room and we were talking for most of the night and snacking on food. Misha had this delicious red bean bread that she got from one of the bakeries on campus. It was sooooo good. I had a few snacks that I contributed as well. The one person in our room didnt seem happy with us at all. She went to bed pretty early and I guess she was annoyed that we were still up talking so she kept rolling over, looking at her phone, sighing and then turning back over and trying to fall asleep. We really weren't being loud or anything, but she didn't even try to ask us to be quiet or to go elsewhere, so that's her problem, not mine. I think around 12 we all decided to head to bed.

The train ride through the night was pretty bumpy and there were some bad weather conditions, so the train had to stop several times during the course of the night. The delays caused us to arrive in Xi'an 40 minutes behind schedule. From the train station, we met up with our tour guides for the trip and walked over to a nearby hotel to have breakfast. The hotel was beautiful and the breakfast was delicious. They had a good mix of Chinese and western food. It was nice to have bacon and eggs for breakfast along with a bunch of different asian pastries and fried rice. There was so much to eat. The banana bread was particularly delicious.

After breakfast, we boarded the bus and drove about an hour to see the Terracotta warriors. The terracotta warriors were a depiction of the armies of Qin Shi Huang, who was the first emperor of China. These statues were buried with him upon his death and were meant to protect the emperor in the afterlife and give him people to rule over. The warriors were first discovered by a Chinese farmer in 1974. There are 4 pits at the burial site, 3 of which contain warriors. There are several kinds of statues: horses, cavalry men, warriors, kneeling archers, leaning archers, mid ranking officers and generals to name a few (not sure if there were more kinds, but these are the main ones). I was able to see pits 1 and 2. Pit 1 is the largest of the excavation sites being 230 meters long and 62 meters wide. This pit contains more than 6,000 figures! Pit 2 was found to contain cavalry men and infantry men and chariots. Pit 3 contains a command post and pit 4 is empty, seemingly left unfinished by its builders. There are other pits, but these 4 are the only ones open for tourists. The tomb has never been opened, supposedly in order to preserve the artifacts inside. After the excavation of the terracotta warriors, the paint began to flake off within 4 minutes. Some pieces still have spots of color left to the, but not many. Some of the figures in 2 of the pits show signs of fire damage from when the building was burned down (don't remember when or why). Also because of this event, several figures are smashed and archaeologists are working to use the fragments to restore some of the terracotta statues. It was an amazing site to see. I'm fairly certain I took over 100 pictures during the time I spent there.

After visiting the Terracotta Warrior exhibit, we boarded the bus and headed back to the center of Xi'an. Here, we stopped at a local restaurant to eat 肉夹馍 (rou jia mo), which is a local staple. It consisted of stewed and smoked shredded pork in a Mo, which is a type of flat bread. It was really really delicious! I wish I could have eaten more! When lunch was finished, the group walked across the street to check into our hotel. It definitely wasn't as nice as the one we had breakfast with, but it was decent. The hotels in China have an interesting system. Not only do you need a room key to access your room, but you also need your roomkey to provide electricity to your room. When you enter the room, there is a slot on the wall where you have to insert your card to turn on the electricity while you are there. It was inconvenient since 2 of us had to share 1 card, but I guess it eliminates the chances of losing a card in your room and it saves the hotel on energy costs since all the lights get turned out once you leave. 


We were supposed to go to take a tour of The Great Mosque, but due to the current situation in China, the mosque was not open to visitors, which left us with free time for the rest of the day. I went exploring around Xi'an with 2 of my classmates. We were looking for shops to buy souvenirs in, but didn't have much luck. Instead, we stumbled upon a huge shopping plaza that had tons of stores and food places. There was a stage where they were taping something for China's Voice show (not sure what that is exactly). So there were people trying out and singing. We also stumbled upon an arcade where Chelsea and I played DDR. We managed to attract quite a crowd. People were very interested why we were in Xi'an and what we were doing in China. Since the discovery of the Terracotta warriors was what made Xi'an famous, they city has only really been a tourist attraction for the past 30 years or so. They still aren't used to getting a lot of foreigners in the area.
We headed back to the hotel and met the group for dinner at a local restaurant. The food was delious (except for the donkey...I didn't want to eat that again). Then it was back to the hotel and to get some sleep and rest up for the next day!
This post is getting pretty long, so I'm going to cut this one off here at the conclusion of the first day and write a second post for my second day in Xi'an. Pictures will be up as soon as I can find some time. I have classes today and quite a bit of work to get done before I can upload pictures.