Jan 17

Today was a history-filled day. First, we went to see the remains of Banpo village, which was the oldest sedentary village found in China. They built a moat to protect their village and had pretty advanced houses. The story about the village was cooler than the remains, which mostly looked like lumpy dirt. Another thing cooler than the remains? The fact that Adriel bought a gourd flute there. AMAZING. We also saw the Terra Cotta warriors, which I remembered surprisingly well from the time I was there about 8 years ago.
For lunch, we went to a place where they tried to sell us paintings while we were eating. A surprising amount of people actually bought a few of them after professor Chen got a good deal on the first one. Andy and Paul bought switchblades. Nice.

For dinner, Pong and Chen took us out to this expensive but AMAZING dinner at a Cantonese style restaurant. Keep in mind, expensive is considered about 60 kuai per person. With the exchange rate, this is still only about $9. And it's a feast.

Some of the cars here in Xi'an have only 3 wheels, like little motorized wheelbarrows. Two in the back, one in the center front. It makes me wonder why cars need 4 wheels.

At night, we went out to a few bars (well, a "couple," rather, if you want to get technical). Our group had Pong as the guest of honor that night. It's pretty funny, a group of almost twenty Americans just wandering into a bar...kind of sounds like the start to a good joke. In the first bar, the room was up two flights of stairs, and it was cold with stone walls and black and white photos interspersed with beer paraphernalia on the walls. It was kind of an awkward set up, with lots of tiny tables pushed together. Also, the lights were too bright so we turned them off, making our room probably appear more curious than the actual people in it (us). It was very, very dark without the lighting. Talk about being stuck between a rock and a hard place. Anyways, we then left to go to a different bar, but Jon was feeling sick, which made me sad. So instead of drinking, he and I just ordered G-rated drinks at the second place: almond flavored milk tea, lemon flavored juice, and fruit flavored icecream.
I then decided to go home earlier with Jon, Christina, and Fii. The rest of the group continued on with the party and Pong - to a kareoke bar.