Sept. 27- Arrival in Xi'an

I woke up the next morning feeling very ill rested. I woke up about every 30 minutes because the train would jerk very hard when it was making stops throughout the night. I was also paranoid about falling off the top bunk but I got a feeling that sleep deprivation would be my constant companion throughout the trip so I very clumsily jumped down from my bunk and went outside the compartment to take in the sites. The window felt very cold and it was raining outside. There was endless grass and small hills to look at for the rest of the ride to Xi'an. I spent much of the day reading my book and falling asleep for short periods of time. Selina pretty much slept the entire train ride and woke up only to eat :)

We arrived in Xi'an around 2:30 and got off the train in a frenzy. We were standing on the platform and Brian was counting to make sure everyone was there and he noticed that Tammy was not among us and he asked where she was and Margaret said she was still getting her stuff on the train. Brian got a sudden look of panic on his face and said "But the train's leaving! Watch my bags!" and he dropped all his stuff and ran after an attendant to make sure that Tammy could get off before the train left for some unknown destination. Luckily she got off and everyone was safely in cold and rainy Xi'an. Everyone was miserable but I, of course, was loving it! We went straight to the Sha'anxi History Museum and were given an hour and a half to explore. The museum was not that big so an hour and a half was a little too much time but by the time we were done looking around everyone was craving a substantial meal. We went to a restaurant with the Beijing Alliance students, they were with us the whole week, and sat down to eat. I think the best way to describe what we looked like while eating our meal is like a pack of wild animals who have been fasting for weeks. It had been almost 24 hours since any of us had real food and we pretty much inhaled everything that they put in front of us. Needless to say we left the restaurant in a very satisfied state :)

We drove to our hotel next which were very nice. There were two people in each room so Selina and I roomed together. It had been about 48 hours since I my last shower so I couldn't wait to take one! After our showers we went out on the town for a few hours and went into several bars on one street. A common theme we noticed was that many of the staff in many of the bars were wearing cowboy hats. All the people from Texas thought it was absolutely ridiculous. We stayed out until about 11:30 and then headed back to the hotel because we had an early wake up call the next morning. It was pretty nice to sleep in a bed that didn't move and jerk for one night :)

Sept. 26- Train to Xi'an

After morning classes we all rushed back to Tonghe to make our final preparations for the trip. Double checking and triple checking with haste we were finally ready to embark on our journey across China. We met downstairs at 4 pm to take a bus over to the Shanghai railroad station. The atmosphere was pure excitement and we couldn't wait to get started. Our train left Shanghai at 5 pm and we had soft sleepers for the first train ride. They were compartments with four beds in each room, two on each side like bunk beds. I was on the top and Selina was underneath me and we shared the compartment with Trish and Jess. Everyone walked around for several hours peeking in and out of others rooms. I played a game of hearts with three of the boys and definitely got stuck with the queen of spades more times than anyone else but it was a good way to pass the time.

We wanted to eat dinner but the dining car was full as soon the train began to move and when we went later it was closed so we all had very unhealthy snacks for dinner. For example, my dinner consisted of peanuts, ritz crackers, and Chinese Whoppers... very well balanced wouldn't you say? The most interesting thing about that train ride was a Chinese man being led around in hard-core chains around each car. Two police officers walked behing him and his chains were really thick around his hands and there was a chain leading down and around his feet. It's safe to say it freaked us out just a bit. They turned the lights off outside the cars at 10:30 so we all retreated to our bunks for some sleep. The train was due to arrive in Xi'an at 2:30 pm so we had plenty of time to sleep. It was my first 20 hour train ride!!!

Kindergarden Day at the Post Office

Today Zhao Laoshi took us to the post office to show us how to mail a letter. We were supposed to write letters to each other for homework and then bring them to class for the trip. If you walked in to that post office when we were there you would think 6 five year olds were making their first attempt to mail something. First we had to write the address in all Chinese. Of course, we all put the name of the receiver first which you're not supposed to do here. The address goes first and then the name so on my envelope the address was towards the top instead of being in the middle. Then we couldn't read the address that Zhao Laoshi had written down so we all guessed as to what characters they were. She came around to each of us during this process and told us we had wrong characters here and wrong characters there so then our envelope had scratches and lines all over it. Next came the stamps. They had a tub of glue with a paintbrush in it to put on the back of a 1 inch stamp. All of the boys put way too much glue on their stamp and preceded to get glue all over the front of their envelopes and then on the back to seal it. I couldn't stop laughing during this entire process. My stamp ended up covering part of the address because it was at the top of the envelope so you couldn't read the last 3 characters. If anyone actually receives their letter it will be a miracle.

Another interesting note, Selina and I have noticed recently that Ruby never, and I mean NEVER, has homework. Every night when we are slaving away on Chinese she watches TV or does stuff on her computer. We asked her about it last night and she said that in college they do almost no work outside the classroom but in high school their schedules were very demanding. She would go to school from 6am-10pm every day and wouldn't have any holidays. But at Fudan she could skip half of her classes each semester and the teachers wouldn't even notice. She also sleeps through most of her classes. She thinks it's very strange that we have so much work here and when we told her how much work we have in the states she looked shocked. She said she's starting to rethink going to grad school in the states :)

Not much else to report. Selina and I are going to look for small travel bags for our week long trip because we don't want to lug around our huge luggage. I don't know when we'll have time for a trip downtown but we'll figure it out!

I Love Fruit!!!

So after eating dumplings, noodles, rice, and pork for two weeks I went and bought bananas and apples this week. I can honestly say that I have never had better bananas or apples in my life. Selina said I had a look of absolute ecstasy on my face when I ate an apple yesterday :) And to make it even better, Ruby's grandfather, who's 90 by the way, raises bees and makes real 100% homemade honey. She brought some back from her house and I put some on an apple this morning... absolutely delightful :) There is a small market right next to our apartments that sells fruit for a really good price so I will be stopping there weekly. Oh, and I learned the word for peanut which I was major excited about. They have dishes of peanuts here at most restaurants and you can ask for it in rice and noodles and stuff, I've never seen peanuts so readily available, it's kind of fantastic. I'm also sure that one of the things I will miss most when I leave China will be the street food. We had it for dinner last night and for lunch today and, I shall dare to say it, I believe it to be better than P.F. Changs... I think I can hear the shocked gasps from all the way over here...

We had our first test today, I did pretty well on the oral section of the exam but the written part was quite a different story. Now I know that these tests require about 5 times as much preparation as I gave it last night. Oh well, now I know :)

We got our schedules for our week long group trip next week. We are going to Xi'an province, a 20 hour train ride, and then we are going to several other places by train and bus. We will be exhausted by the time we get back but it sounds like so much fun! We are going up to higher elevations so it will be colder, which I am looking forward to :) We leave on Friday at 4pm and get back on Saturday. It will also be nice not to have class for a week.

Tomorrow Selina and I want to go downtown in the morning and look around and shop. We both want to get a coat custom made while we're here. Some people are getting cashmere coats made but that's too fancy for me, I would like a leather jacket with bizarre colored lining on the inside though. I know that pictures of Walmart are in high demand so I promise to have some up the by the end of the weekend :)

A Very Like, Very Interesting Day :)

Well today held many events that I will not forget anytime soon. The most prominent being an old man offering to pay me for "entertainment" while we were walking around downtown. We walked by him and he started to follow me and held out a 10 kuai (about $1.50) bill and smiled at me in a very creepy way and kept following me until my emphatic negative nods finally dissuaded him. He did not offer this invitation to anyone else which made me the object of every joke for the rest of the day... and probably for many days to come.

We arrived downtown around 3pm and went to Zapata's for Mexican food and all you can drink margaritas. It's a good thing we went with extreme skepticism and without high expectations because the mexican food was not mexican food. They had cheeseburgers and hot dogs. We were shocked that they didn't even have chips and salsa. We hung out there for about 3 hours drinking margaritas and then headed out to Nanjing Road, a very popular shopping spot. We were too tired to haggle today but we scoped out a few good places to return to.

Tomorrow Selina and might invest in a bike. I could possibly die while riding a bike here because I don't think any of the drivers have gone through driver's ed but I think it won't be a true Chinese experience unless I get one. Besides, the risk is part of the fun :) I'm also going to Walmart to get a lot of fruit. That's what I miss the most right now, a good fruit bowl in the mornings.

Make sure you guys are being safe with all the bad weather coming in!!!

I Survived!!!

It's amazing to me how being immersed in a language can develop your learning abilities in just a week. On Monday I was struggling to understand anything our professors were saying and as each day passed I understood more and more. I actually feel like I've accomplished something huge just because I can understand when she assigns us homework or asks us questions on the grammar. Our professors are both very nice but the second one kind of scares me. She has a withering stare that she gives you when she can tell you haven't memorized the dialogues. I know this because I only memorized half of the dialogue today and I definitely got nailed to the wall with it. Lesson learned :)

This weekend we are going to the Urban Planning Center and then we plan to stay downtown to shop and sight see. It will be nice to take a break from our homework which takes a minimum of 3 hours every night. We don't have class on Monday because they are celebrating the Autumn Moon Festival, hooray for a three day weekend!!!

Oh, I forgot to tell y'all about an excursion I took the other day. There is a street near our apartments where I get an egg pancake some mornings and I walked down it the other day on the way back form class. I was taken aback by how peaceful this street seemed when all around there were cars honking and bike bells ringing. There was classical Chinese music playing from a small store and many small apartments where families lived. Most of there belongings were outside the dwelling because the rooms were so small and all the cooking was done outside as well. I felt more at peace on that tiny, unfashionable street than I have anywhere else in the city. The combination of the music, lack of traffic noise, and small families running about made it more real than anything I have seen thus far.

And can I say how great it is to have an AWESOME roommate while studying abroad. It's so nice to walk to class everyday and eat our baozi, talk about class or family or whatever, and never get tired of the other person. It makes things soooo much easier :)

A Home, Not A Hotel

Well, class today was about the same today as it was yesterday. Really hard and really confusing. It felt good to get out of there and have the rest of the afternoon off. We ate lunch at a Japanese place and ate noodles with bamboo shoots and steak. The bamboo shoots were surprisingly good. With the rest of the day to burn Selina and I decided that we wanted to make our rooms more homey. Our sheets are white, our walls are white, and the florescent light just makes everything look even whiter so we opted to make a journey across town to IKEA.

We took the bus to the subway and took about a 15 minute ride to a part of town that we haven't been to yet. Of course on the map IKEA looks like it's right across the street from the station but we definitely started in the wrong direction, got redirected, and found IKEA about 20 minutes from the station after winding through many roads and almost colliding with many cars. Once we arrived we looked for a duvet cover and some rugs to add some color. As I stood in front of the many selections I thought about matching everything and then just decided to get the most bizarre and colorful rugs and blankets I could find. I selected a multicolored rug for my room and bathroom and a very colorful duvet cover. I even got a poster with a bunch of neon signs on it :) I added pics of each of our rooms to commemorate how happy we were to have personal touches to our rooms. Now it feels like we live here, which is nice.

Tomorrow I don't have class until 1:30 so I think I will get up, eat breakfast, and explore the campus shops and surrounding area. I will let you know what I find :)

Oh, and here is my picture sight in case I forgot to send it to someone http://www.flickr.com/photos/29895521@N02/

Love y'all!!!