Xi'an

Wednesday, 6/20 - Thursday, 6/21: Train from Lhasa to Xi'an, 36 hours. Had hard sleepers, mercifully. The ceiling whistled. Played enough spades for the rest of my life. Met a girl Ziyu (both 4th tone) from Hunan who is studying accounting at Arizona State University and staying with a family there, and she brought her host mother to tour China this summer. We were met at the train station by Grace and a driver whose name I do not know, so we said goodbye to Christopher who is flying from Xi'an to Beijing, and then from Beijing to America, early tomorrow morning. I'm not sure how Grace is affiliated with Xi'an Gao Xin No. 1 High School (which actually has five campuses including middle schools and high schools and an international school). Then Alice, an administrative assistant, got into the van we were in somewhere in Xi'an and showed us our rooms. They are super nice with TVs and personal bathrooms and kitchens (that do not have stoves, but do have water coolers and fridges and sinks and Charlie's has a microwave) and double beds and very executive-looking desks and more cabinets than I could fill up if I had all my stuff from home. I'm happy to have my own room, for the first time in China.

Friday, 6/22: This morning we met Alice and she took us to breakfast. They gave us cards with 100Y on them to buy food at the school. Since food in the cafeteria is pretty cheap, this should last us. Then we went to meet with Jane, who looks very young but mentioned her husband, who is our contact at the school. We told her about our curriculum and when we wanted to teach. We met the school's Party Secretary, Madame Jiao, and she set us up with hard sleeper tickets to Guilin on our last Friday here. We agreed to teach every day from 7:40 to 11:40, except Sunday, starting Tuesday. Our students are 15 years old. They are doing their high school admission exams this weekend, so they will be pretty tired, which is why we are not teaching on Monday. We also briefly met the principal who administrates all five campuses. Everyone was concerned about me because my nose was running a lot, so Jane went to the school nurse and got me herbal medicine pills. I can't read anything on the package so I just take 3 pills 3 times a day like Jane told me to.

Paper products are so rare in China. There's never toilet paper in the bathrooms, not to mention paper towels, and Madame Jiao was the only person who had tissues. On the train, my nose was running so Charlie grabbed some napkins (maybe 10) out of the bag behind the food counter. A waitress ran up to me, scolded "Tai duo le!" and grabbed half of them back. That said Xi'an Gaoxin has been very nice - my bathroom came with toilet paper!

At lunch, we met a couple of the exchange students (just graduated high school) from California. They were very nice. They have Chinese lessons at 1:30 in the afternoon so I might try to join in with their class.

In the afternoon, Alice took us to the international campus. She says she doesn't know why it's called international. She also said that the senior campus, where we are staying, has better students. If I went to a Xi'an Gaoxin school, I'd want to be a less good student then, because the international campus was awesome! They had a robots room with a drill press and some other power tools and circuit boards and a robotic plastic child-sized car that drives itself and another robot that navigates the streets of a toy town and various other robots. They had a cooking room with a set up with a pan and a knife and an apron, etc, for each student, and a sewing room with a sewing machine for each student. They had an art room where students all made pottery, and lecture halls almost as big as at MIT, and much nicer. They had a weights room that included those old-fashioned "exercise" machines that ladies in the fifties used where you put a belt around your butt and stand there while it vibrates, and a whole ping pong room. The gym teacher taught me to play ping pong. I'm very bad at it. They also had a whole gymnastics room.

Alice took us to the grocery store, too. In China the term "supermarket" is taken very seriously. It was similar to a Walmart Superstore, one of the giant Walmarts that you could live in.

This keyboard keeps highlighting paragraphs and deleting them. It's driving me nuts. I don't know what's causing it either.

Saturday, 6/23: This morning we met Alice at 8:30 am to go to see the terracotta warriors. They were only discovered in 1974 by a t farmers digging a new well. They are very impressive. There are so many of them, and they each have different facial features and facial expressions. There are chariots and infantrymen and archers and generals. They are all lifesize. Then we went into Xi'an to the town. We wandered around and bought dinner and discussed the nature of the universe and the meaning of "meaning" (either frustrating or interesting, I wasn't sure) and my dinner was fried rice and spicy mushroom soup and I overate again and I had two ice cream popsicles today. Then, around 9 pm, we saw these people beating drums and marching in an intricate pattern and waving decorative umbrellas and bells and things. About half of them were white tourists, so I wonder if it was a special occasion or something that happens regularly so that tour groups can see it.

This keyboard is driving me nuts.

In China, especially in Xining, my name is "hello." Lots of random people will say hello to anyone that looks like a waiguoren (foreigner). This is less true in Xi'an because there are so many white people here. At the tourist destinations, I've seen more white people than anywhere else in China. I've also seen people who are not white or Chinese, which is also rare. At the museum I heard someone behind us (other white people) say, "Gosh, there are so many white people here." No one really wants to be where all the white people are because people want to avoid the big tourist destinations and feel like we're seeing the "real" China.

China is starting to seem less foreign to me. I've stopped having the urge to take a picture anytime I see a pointy roof. Also, I think that Xi'an is less exotic than Lhasa is less exotic than Xining. The area where the school is in Xi'an is very rich. A few blocks away, there is a Starbucks and a Pizza Hut. Also, the restaurant down the street puts your leftovers in boxes for you, instead of dumping it straight into recycled grocery bags like they did in Xining.

After seeing the dancing people, we went into a bar across from the bus station. It had the dancing non-strippers again (who mercifully went away a couple minutes after we arrived), and a TV showing every single Christina Aguilera music video ever. I would like to go out with Chinese people and learn the dice game that they like to play.

I heard that there was a curfew in Xi'an but we got back a little after 11 and the gate was still open so I think we're fine.