Xian Arrival

We are back from a long weekend in Xian (pronounced She-on), where the Terra Cotta Warriors are. What a treat it was!
In the 1st leg of our journey we hopped on a train, our 1st train ride here in China. It took 14 hours to get from Huai'an to Xian. Bruce and his family, Lilly and Eric came with us and set up the travel and hotel stays. That was a load off our minds.

Here we are waiting for the train in Huai'an

 The train was pretty cool. There were 6 beds in each berth, so a triple bunk bed on each side with a little table. The beds were a typical Chinese style bed...hard (which we are getting used to). The 6th bed was occupied by a nice guy, who didn't speak a lick of english. The downside....he snored sooooooooo loud AND he talked in his sleep. It was in Chinese, but if we could understand it I am sure it would have been funny. Anyway, it was a rough night sleep. Also there was a  squatty toilet for each train car (pictured below) and it was so scary, the picture does it no justice, the smell and moisture was just plain wrong!

From top down...Part of the view from train window to a city that I do not know, Ethan by our  berth, Ethan on the top bunk, Everest on the top bunk, the squatty bathroom, it really was that small.

 We arrived about 10am in Xian and we took a van to our hotel. While on the way we found out that there was no power at the hotel. Jami and Bruce went to another and decided that no power was better than the other options out there. To make a long story short we still had to move hotels, but the hotel made that arrangement because they didn't have a license to have foreigners stay. So we got to stay at a nicer hotel for the same price and not too far from where we originally were.

Power? Why would we have power problems?

The street that we stayed by was was cool! It was the place to be. The pictures that we took just don't explain the sights, sounds and smells. There were vendors and little food and juice places up and down the street and there were allies and it just seemed endless. A fun thing also happened there our 1st day....we ran into some Students that were from California, Washington State and Provo/Orem that are here for 4 months volunteering and teaching English at a school by Shanghai. We asked and they were LDS as well! It's always fun to run into those with the same faith.

The street that we walked every day while in Xian, me at the City Wall (NOT the great wall), the night lights of some of the buildings and what it looks like during the day

On our 1st day there we also went with Bruce and saw a pagoda that is over 2000 years old.

Family pic at the City wall, The 2000 year old pagoda entrance, we ran into some monks and got our picture taken with them, Bruce, Jami and the boys with the Pagoda in the background.

Tomorrow I will update the blog with pictures of the Terra Cotta Warriors. It was quite the day and I took lots and lots of pictures.