Xi'an is here ...

---

Wow we made it out of Beijing. The problem is every student is returning to their home town so getting out of town is impossible. We spent an extra day in Beijing as a result of but that was okay becasue we found a Lama Temple and Confuscious Temple and College that was about 500 years old and was so interesting. In Getting out of Beijing, we got ourselves a soft sleeper which is a wonderful translation of "First Class" which means we had a room on the train we shared with two other people who turned out to be a young couple of students returning home. They neither smoked nor snored so were were happy. We were lucky that in Bejing they have Foreigners Ticket Wicket whcih mad ethings easy. In China you can not buy a return ticket on the train or bus and they go on sale only 5 days before the date you want so buying tickets is an art and science and frustrating. The great thing about the soft sleeper is, is that it was an over night train. It left Beijing at 9:30 pm and arrived in Xi'an at 8:30 am next day so all that time on the train is while we were sleeping and we save the cost of a Hostel.

Okay Xi'an is a walled city about 1200 km from Beijing. It is organized chaos and not too many white people go here (pardon the expression white people plus I am a tad red and brown mixed together depending how you look at me). We are staying in a private room in a Hostle just out side of the wall and after a week of dorms in Beijing it is nice but not always afordable. In this case "BOBS Guets House" was cheap but all in all clean and nice atmosphere. The beer is good. We lined up for almost two hours to buy a ticket to Chengdu and had to stay here for an extra day becasue tickets were not available when we wanted to leave. The Hostel had room for us the extra day. We will remember now to buy our ticket for the next city as soon as we get off the train. It is SOOOO HOT here. Not humid, a very dry heat. It is a bit of a dirty city and the traffic is crazy. Crossing the street means walking until you think you might get hit then stop and then proceed repeating the process over and over until you are across the street. We found a bakery that sells well I'm not sure what it was they sold but it was good and cost me only 1 yuan (about 10 cents Canadaian). For that we risked crossing the street. Tommorow we are going to the Terra Cotta Warriours which is an amaxing thing (more later).

PHOTOS: Are coming soon. We need to find a high speed internet to send photos

---