Each time I look at my blog, I realize how far behind I am ! Keeping up with all the exciting stuff that happens here is quite a lot of work and these days I am limited on time. This is largely due to all the traveling I’ve been doing.
Two weeks ago my program had a weekend trip where we went to the nearby cities of Shaoxing and Ningbo. It was nice to get away from the city for a bit and enjoy some beautiful scenery and fresh air. The highlight of the trip was easily the national park that we visited. We hiked through the valleys and the guys especially liked climbing the mountains. Lunch was also quite nice as we had a meal made by the one family that lives in the valley. 
In both of the cities, we visited different historical sites and saw old architecture. We also went on a boat ride according to the traditional style of the region. Here, the person rowing the boat uses his legs instead of his arms to row!
This past weekend three of my friends and I decided to go to Xi’an. Now Xi’an is not very close to Shanghai; in fact, it’s almost 15 hours away. In order to be back for class on Monday morning we took two overnight trains and only stayed one night in Xi’an. While it was definitely a short trip it was very much worthwhile.
One of the main reasons we wanted to go to Xi’an was to see the Terracotta Warriors. I’m still not entirely sure of the history, but essentially an emperor in China about 2,000 years ago wanted thousands of statutes of soldiers and horses to be buried with him. The pits with the soldiers were not discovered until 1974 and since then the Chinese government has been excavating them. Within the four pits, most of the soldiers remain buried in order to best preserve the statues. Those soldiers that are visible are quite impressive. Each statue has its own facial expression and for being more than 2,000 years old most are remarkably intact.
Another highlight of our trip was our bike ride around the city wall. The day was remarkably warm and sunny and we were able to fully enjoy it with a two hour bike ride. It was a great way to get a feel for the city.
The hostel that we stayed in was also really nice and had a cool atmosphere. This was my first experience at a hostel and I really liked it. I hope to stay in one again on my next trip. I even met a girl who knew someone I had gone to Seton Hall with. It really is a small world! Just before we left I was able to meet up with Darren, the Director of the Alliance program in Xi’an. I had met him last year in Beijing and since I knew he was now in Xi’an I contacted him to meet up. Unfortunately our previous plans fell through and we were only able to see each other for about 15 minutes before we caught our train.
The train ride itself was quite the experience. In China, there are different classes of seats on the trains which are divided between hard and soft class. For overnight trains, like the one we were on, they also have hard sleepers and soft sleepers. Hard sleepers have six beds per compartment without any doors while the soft sleepers have four beds within a closed-off compartment. Since we were traveling with four people we were able to get a compartment to ourselves. On Friday we left at 8pm and got into Xi’an around 10:30am the next morning. While the bed was a little hard and the train was sporadically noisy I was still able to get some sleep.
When we had told our teachers about our plans to go to Xi’an everyone had been skeptical and worried that we wouldn’t be in class on Monday. Needless to say we were a bit tired come Monday morning after getting in at 7:15am, but we all made in to class. (Well, Morgan at least made it for the second period after taking a shower.) I even came 10 minutes earlier than I normally would have!
So that’s a pretty good summary of my two recent trips. In total I may or may not have taken about 1,000 photos… Needless to say, I’ve been seeing a lot. Even better, a week from now I will be in Hong Kong! It’s going to be quite the trip.
P.S. If you would like to see the rest of my photos from my trip check out my Picasa Web Album. Here is the link: https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/myphotos
