Before we were to leave Xi'an, we got to visit 3 tourist spots. The Giant Wild Goose Pagoda, The Great Mosque of Xi'an, and the Bell Tower and Drum Tower. Xi'an is a far Western Chinese city and it's location has made it somewhat of a gateway for outside religion and thought. This Pagoda houses Buddhist scriptures and such. It used to be 3 stories taller, but an earthquake in 1556 reduced the height by 3 stories. Crazy to think this thing was here way before Columbus ever came to America.
This is a picture of Tyler atop the ancient City Wall of Xi'an. He looks good solo, but our awesome bus drive is in the next photo in the red sweater. His name is Xiao Liang-Jian. He invited me to chill with his family next time I'm in Xi'an.
Teaching this kid how to blow it up after a fist bump.
The city wall.
Can't go anywhere in this world to get away from apple advertising:
After checking out the city wall, we went to the muslim quarter. Xi'an is the first city in china to be introduced to Islam. There is a mosque there that was built in the 1400s. Today a market surrounds it where you can buy a bunch of random crap, cool tshirts, electronics, and seafood. I bought some plugs for my phone and tshirts... steered clear of the seafood on a stick though. (I'm not much for squid on a plate, let alone a stick)
These are frozen mochi balls. They are very cold and make you breath smoke out when you eat them. Pretty fun, but they don't taste good. So a one ball free sample was good enough for me.
Deep fried bananas. They were not very good. Tyler got them for me. I also ate some rose petal cake which was disgusting.
Now we are getting to what I was real excited about. These are called roujiamo 肉夹馍 and taste delicious. Basically a slow cooked pork sandwich. It is said that Islam would've penetrated much more into China, but China loves it's pork. You'll notice in the pictures how happy I am after eating this. I think the photo of me is me offering Tyler a bite. I was hoping he'd say no.
Some lady had the same color hair as Tyler and so she wanted to interview him. LOLJK, she was interviewing Tyler to ask him what he'd do if he saw someone getting beat up. He said he'd help. Weird.
First time of breaking away from the group. This taxi driver took me back to the hotel because I left 600 chinese dollars back at the hotel. The hotel found it and gave it back no problem.
It feels like it's a holiday everywhere you go in China. Here's a random picture outside the bus:
And here it is. Walking in to the lobby of our hotel in the small town (3,000,000 people) of Baoji. I have to admit, I was embarrassed when I first walked in. I thought I was coming in to a destitute little village to help people out. We showed up a 4... maybe 5 star hotel and were treated like royalty in there. The Chinese overdo everything and this hotel was awesome. By the end of the trip I was at ease that we were being able to help out a ton of less fortunate Chinese kiddos and still have some of the creature comforts of home. The hotel is the Baoji Crown Plaza.
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