xi'an. part 1 of 3

friday march 21, 2008
yesterday we arrived in xi'an at about 11pm. we're here with girls from the kaiyin school and some of them had to teach thursday, so chantelle and me picked up a girl sharon from kaiyin and got here thursday night. sharon actually was one of the girls chantelle and me carpooled with in rexburg to get to the ilp training in Salt Lake City. so we actually knew her before so it was pretty cool. it was about a two hour bus ride and two hour flight to get here. and everything went AMAZINGLY smooth. dont worry, things like that dont go unnoticed with me, or at least i try to make sure they dont get passed by.
xi'an is AMAZING. i thought it would just be a little place of old china not much. but this city is HUGE. theres a big fatty mall right in the center of town and everything else seems like its shopping. alot of it is high fashion stuff like prada and louie voutton and what not. but its just busting full of people. and its what i thought china was going to look like. the architecture here of the buildings still has the old china pagoda-ness to it but has western and regular stores. our hostel is AMAZING!! seriously. coolest hostel ever. and the people here are SO SO nice. we have a 4 bed mixed dorm with 3 of us, so we dont think they'll put a fourth person in it. the only downside is that bathrooms are down the hall and showers are a floor up. but seriously the awesomeness of this hostel makes up for it.

stories of the day:
so 3 of us arrived thursday and the rest of the group showed up today (friday) at like 5:30 so chantelle, sharon and me thought we'd just explore a bit today. so one of the guys at the hostel told us about this muslim market street. it was about 15 minutes from the hostel and was AWESOME. it made us feel like we were back in yangshuo. total bargaining street. it was still chinese, but they have a bunch of muslim kabob/ pita bread / other food restuarants. its just a really neat place.

okay, so i've wanted like a little mini flute, and i figured i'd just get one in beijing but we found like these stone egg flute things. its really cool i'll take a picture of it. so we saw them at the booths at the beginning of the muslim street and saw them pretty much everywhere. so since we're bargaining pros we'd ask everyone what they were willing to pay. somebody said like 35 yuan, but another lady started at 10. so i'm like sweet i can get a smaller one for like 5 yuan. so we go through the whole street and i see some booth and a guy has them. so i ask how much and he says 65 yuan. i pretty much laughed in his face. literally. so i start to walk away and they always go "okay okay, give me price and they have a calculator out. so i'm like seriously? seriously? how much i want to pay and i push the 5 button and he's like no! no! no and i'm like yes yes yes (seriously this was the converstaion. so i told him i can get it for 5 yuan at a booth right down the street. so he's like okay and he punches in 15 and i'm like no.. so i walk away and once you walk away thats when they go down. so he's like okay okay! 5 yuan so i go back and now i'm just picking out which one i want and theres like 3 sizes and he picks up a medium sized one. he says this one is much better and taps it to show me the deeper sound. so i said yes but this one is 5 yuan. but he plays it for me and says he can give it to me for 10 yuan. so i'm like, alright i'll get that one. this is the best part. i handed him a 20 yuan bill and he gets my change and like bows to me when he hands it to me and puts the flute egg in a bag and bows to me again, and of course i bow back as i receive and we're both just smiling that, my friend is when you know you are a good bargainer. haha. it was funny.

then the rest of the kaiyin group girls showed up at around 5:30. they had to leave friday because they taught late on thursday.

and we were so excited we saw a poster up for dumpling making party at 8pm on friday nights. so of course we went. and it was so much fun! we made so many little ones. and we met some cool people. i'm seriously in love with hostels just because of all the people you meet. we met this red headed guy (we never did catch his name) and he was just doing a world tour. its ridiculous how many people we meet that are just touring the world because they can. he was like late 20's i think and from america. and he was traveling with damien, from FRANCE. they met at a hostel in beijing and just decided to keep travelling with each other. so pretty much spent the night with redhead guy and damien eating dumplings. :) its so ridiculous. i feel like this is all made up sometimes.

okay well the other girls booked an 8 bed mixed dorm room and there were actually a couple other guys staying in their room. (a bit awkward, but what can you do..) and some of them were actually american. but one of them was a guy named adam from AUSTRALIA. seriously for reals i love international hostels.

then the girls said they saw a WALMART!! on the way in so of course we had to go. lol. then me and chantelle went back to muslim street and then just headed home. for the night. but def in love with xi'an. ♥♥

(ps. the connection at the hostel's really wierd/not good, so pictures are going to have to wait until i get back to guzhen. sorry!! but theres a lot of goodens!!! i promise!! it'll be worth the wait)