Beijing and Xi'an

Woohoo!

 We just got back from our week long vacation to Xi'an and Beijing! Man oh man did so much cool stuff happen!

 

We started out on a nice note with a 26 hour train ride to Xi'an. And guess what. We had STANDING tickets. It was a lovely experience. It's one of my favorite things to stand in between seats full of Chinese people for 26 hours, surrounded by smoking men and people hawking lougies. Better yet, we were perched right next to the squatter. (If you don't know what this is, look it up.) I am now positive that Chinese people have smaller bladders than anyone else on the planet. We were having to move ourselves and our luggage every 23 seconds (approximately) and the smell was wonderful. If you are looking for a way to spend 26 hours of your life, I recommend this! (I'm being super sarcastic here, in case you couldn't figure that out haha)  Okay, okay it wasn't so bad. The first 2 hours were, but then we made some friends who let us go sit on the floor with them, and then it got better. The thing about China is that wherever you go you will meet a new buddy. We have so many new Chinese friends we just don't know what to do with them! So, as words can't really express this train experience, I'll stop here. But I will say that I wouldn't take back that memory. But I will NEVER do it again haha.

 

We arrived in Xi'an at 11:00 Friday night, and so we went straight to our Hostel and crashed then on Saturday morning we went adventuring.  We were only staying in Xi'an til that evening, so we had to cram! Our first stop was the Terracotta Warriors. If you haven't heard about them, they are pretty much a huge collection of clay soldiers that were unearthed  in the 70's when a farmer found a clay ear in his well he was digging. They were buried with an emperor to help him journey to the next world. They were pretty interesting, and I was surprised by how big they were and how much detail each one had. It probably took forever to make all of them.

 

After the Terracotta Warriors we went and explored the Muslim Quarters. It's a block full of shops and food places that are surrounding a Muslim Mosque that was built almost 800 years ago. It was really entertaining, and everywhere you looked there was something new and exciting to capture your attention. The Mosque was beautiful. Becca and I were really excited to see the Mosque because we took and Intro to Islam class together last fall, so we got to use some of that knowledge while we explored. It was really fun.

 

That night we had to get back on a train (sigh) for another 13 hours so we could get to Beijing. This time it wasn't so bad, because we had hard seats, so we were able to get some shut eye in. At this point we were all so exhausted that we could have fallen asleep practically anywhere, so we were happy to be able to sit down.

 

We got to Beijing around noon and checked into our Hostel there (the Candy Inn, and I would highly recommend it!) and then we got started with our day! Our first stop was the Lama Temple.

 

The Lama Temple is old. (don't ask how old cuz I don't remember haha) It used to be a palace for princes to live at, and then it was made into a temple a few hundred years ago. It is really amazing and beautiful. The Chinese use such beautiful colors in their buildings, and such amazing architecture. We took some beautiful pictures, and we were able to see some people worship with incense. Its really cool to see how such a different religion works. In one of the buildings there they have a HUGE statue. Its over 26 meters high, (A giraffe is about 5 meters high, so maybe that can put it into perspective for you a little bit) and it was made out of a single piece of  sandalwood! It actually holds the Guiness Book of World Records for largest statue made out of a piece of wood, just in case you would ever want to know that random fact. It was a ton of fun to see.

 

On Monday we went and saw the Beijing Zoo! The Hogle Zoo will never be as cool ever again. The Beijing Zoo in huge. They have like 10 times as many animals. I'll tell you a couple of my favorite things that we saw/did.

Well, in China, instead of selling hot dogs at stands like we do in America, they sell these meat sticks. I was really hungry, and they smelled pretty good, so I thought I would try one. At first it wasn't too bad, it just tasted like China (and yes, China has a flavor). But then I felt something weird in my mouth, so I spit out the piece I was eating and looked at it and it had thick spikey black hairs in it. So, of course I wasn't going to eat anymore. But China also doesn't believe in having very many garbage cans, so I had to hold onto the meat stick for awhile. So, as we were walking, we came up to some of the monkey exhibits. They are very different than the U.S. ones. For starters, they just have glass walls, and then no top. And, as should be expected, people were throwing in food and trash to try and feed the monkeys. Someone threw in an entire bucket full of popcorn that was still sealed in plastic, and this big furry monkey came over and grabbed it, finally figured out how to open it, and ate the popcorn. So, we were just standing there, taking in all the madness, when I remembered I had a meat stick in my hand. Might as well not let it go to waste, right? So I chucked a chunk of it over the glass wall and I hit a baby monkey in the head. Haha it was kinda funny. At first he just looked around all confused and then he realized there was a piece of food on the ground next to him and so he picked up the meat chunk and started gnawing on it. It was really funny. So that is the story of the Meat Stick and the Monkey. Another highlight of the Zoo was the Zebras!  You know how in the Hogle Zoo the Zebras are far away and you just get to see them from a distance?  Well, in China it's the total opposite. They keep the zebras in a big pen that is lowered about 5 feet from the sidewalk, and all they have around the pen is a small metal fence. So we could just lean across the fence and totally PET the ZEBRAS. Yes, you heard correctly! We got to PET them! It was so cool. They are so pretty. We also got to see cute, cuddly, fat panda bears!  They were adorable.  The Zoo was amazing.

 

This post is already way long, so I'll stop here for now and then write more later! I have so much more to tell!