Xi'an!

Hello!

My Abigail Monson is posting this for me as I have been denined access
(repeatedly) to both my blog, and my picture website.  I may find
another free picture uploading site and use that instead, but in the
meantime this is the best I can do.  We are all safe and healthy
(knock on wood) and we are currently in Xi'an, city famous for the
terracotta warriors and intact city wall.  We arrived yesterday
(Thursday, by the way I had to ask three different people before being
certain it was Thursday as I really had no clue) by train from
Chengdu.  It was an overnight train, rather nice and we all slept
quite well.

Xi'an is really beautiful. It is nice because it is a much smaller
city center than Chengdu and therefore easier to navigate.  Our hostel
is very nice, they have delicious pizza, which is fantastic since we
have all been craving cheese quite frequently in this lactose
intolerant country.  They also have a very nice golden retriever and
an orange cat who is very cute but annoying loud in the middle of the
night.  The hostels have all been really very nice, and unexpectedly
modern.  China is definitely quite capable of staying at the cutting
edge of modern, new, and innovative (except, of course, internet
freedom and that of expression, but hey we don't judge, things run
really smoothly here otherwise).  Along those lines, I have decided
that all of China is permanently under construction.  Just outside
every city are hundreds of acres of developing land with dozens of
high rise apartment buildings half finished, and not necessarily being
currently worked on.  The unemployment rate must be unexistent,
everyone has a job to do, but it seems that not everyone is wuite
wealthy enough to afford what the government expects they are able
to...  My assumption is that they may be wealthy enough, but their
recent history has entrenched in them that to save money is essential
and to spend is still too risky.  I don't blame them, it must be
impossible to escape the habits of a poverty sticken generation, and
why should they?

Xi'an is a very nice city.  Today we drove just outside it to visit
the underground mausoleum of an emporeror of the Han dynasty
(approximately 100 BC).  It was very interesting, somewhat like a
miniature version of the terracotta warrior exhibit, which we will
porbably do on Sunday.  This afternoon we went and had Chinese
massages, which were fantastically different and interesting but very
enjoyable.  All three of us were in the same room, on lounge chairs,
and we were given a set of loose fitting pajamas to change into.  The
therapists worked all over, but instead of focusing on relaxation
techniques and muscle tension they focused a lot on bone pressure
therapy, pressure of the joints, and accupressure points.  The TV was
on in the background, the therapists talked to each other, and we were
rewquired to change position a lot, but I was surprisingly relaxed the
whole time.  It was kind of like I was doing yoga (there was a lot of
stretching, but also a lot of joint movement) but that I wasn't
exerting any real energy in the process.  The face and head massage
lasted an acceptable amount of time as well which I really enjoyed.
This evening we went to the Muslim quarter, which is famous for its
food and shopping night market.  It was really nice, and had ample
souvenir buying opportunities.  We will definitely being going back
again, probably tomorrow after we take a bike ride around the ancient
wall that surrounds the city.

A story I forget to tell last time involves the bus system of Chengdu,
the last city we were in.  The buses there were a necessary part of
getting around as everything was quite spread out.  We quickly larned
how to get on and off and pay, but that was about all that we would
master the whole time we were there.  Standing up and staying standing
on those buses must be something that you are born with or inherantly
learn from the tiny age of 2 if you live in that city.  The buses are
large, the streets are complex and crowded, there are lots of
roundabouts and way too many obstacles in the road, and the bus
dreivers are about as good at driving as your everyday Thai taxi
driver.  (No offense to the Thai people, but those taxi drivers are
the best possible example I can come up with of horrible, awful, near
death experience driving).  Basically every time we got on a bus I
started to pray.  If closing my eyes would have helped and not caused
an immediate motion sickness vomit I most certainly would have done
so.  I violated so many laws of personal space on those vehicals I'm
surpirse I wasn't arrested.  Basically, it was quite the experience of
"crowded china meets new age driving and frantic urges to go fast
everywhere" syndrome.

Okay, time to sign off.  Hope everyone had a Happy St Patrick's Day!
We miss and love you all,

Maia