I’m afraid I have been mostly idle today so far and so I shall bore you mostly with yesterday’s news. I am sorry that I was unable to correspond until now, I had a rather busy day yesterday.
Thursday 5th September: We waddled towards some castle walls at around 9am, after some more complaints about the hotel. Amongst these complaints were several remarks about how at 2/3am every morning they were woken by doors banging, sometimes accompanied by the smell of smoke. This did not cause even the slightest inconvenience to me, apparently I sleep like a log. It did however, make me wonder. Is Xi’an actually known for its booming nightlife scene that we miss every time we nod off to sleep at 9pm? I was semi-annoyed that I couldn’t google it, although I figured that it was probably best that I didn’t know what I was missing by remaining inside my little tortoise box room.
Alas, it turns out that 9am was too early for any stores to be open! How strange (…) ! Luckily the elderly dance troops were out in full force around the walls. We passed around 7/8 all doing different styles to different tunes. “How do they all know what to do?” I asked. If there was any leader or choreographer they escaped me. “They just dance to the beat!” My Uncle said. I admire his optimism but am concerned about how easy he thinks synchronised dancing is.
We waddled back to the hotel where we checked out – there were several people checking in. “Why do they check in so early?” Norman asked. I have no idea what travelscape he exists in. I really do not. The flight was fairly unremarkable, aside from the fact that it was delayed by a couple of hours. And that they had no vegetarian food on board for dinner aside from a choco cupcake and a slice of orange. Such is China. I wasn’t too upset. We arrived at the hotel at 8:30, the same hotel as we stayed in before to my dismay. It is really quite expensive for what is essentially just a place to sleep. We had initially planned to stay in a cheaper one, but A Mee had checked it out and said we should probably stay in this one. Really though, it is just a bed.
I get the distinct feeling that my Uncle thinks that my parents are paying for this trip and it is a little frustrating having him complain about spending over £3 for a meal out when he insists that we stay in such an ‘expensive’ hotel. I type that in quotation marks because relatively speaking, it is obviously not. But I could spend less in the center of Paris (and did) and any place with a bed will do.
And now to answer your questions.
I am not sure which was my favourite dynasty, only that I was glad to see that they had so many artefacts compared to the Chinese collection in London. It is always nice to see that we haven’t stolen every object of importance from another nation. I will say that the Chinese people that existed 3000 years ago were much more advanced than I could have imagined. It made me question if that much had really been invented in Europe in comparison. They made the Romans look like Neanderthals.
I did touch the Choi, luckily they were enjoyed by Norman and Janey and thus remained unprohibited.
Fortunately the market was only wet with muddy water. I will not be needing a tetanus booster shot.
Friday 6th September: WHY DO WE NEED TO ATTEND BREAKFAST AT 8AM WE WERE BEING PICKED UP AT 9:30/10 BY A MEE. Okay glad I got that out.
Aside from this, I was psyched to receive all the toiletries over 100ml that A Mee had been storing for me this morning but distressed when I remembered that I had decided not to hand over my deodorant can. RIP. Nevertheless, I smothered my facial moisturiser onto my face with enthusiasm that probably bordered on uncomfortable to watch and left my mouthwash in until it burned like my tongue was on fire. Oh to be clean and slippery once more.
I heard some mutterings about a girls trip at breakfast and was left to ponder what this might entail. Fortunately, what it ended up meaning was that I got to witness an extremely authentic Chinese experience. Unfortunately, this meant shopping for over an hour for a rice cooker in a department store. Only once it seemed as though my Aunt had chosen one did she ask ME how much it was in Australian dollars. I told her it was 1200 dollars, a little surprised that she had settled on this one after declaring that the reason for this excursion was that rice cookers were more expensive in Australia. The price tag was available to all to read you see, so you can imagine my surprise when she said “What?! I’m not spending over a thousand dollars”. We had been standing for 40 minutes.
Next we headed to a supermarket where I raided the candy aisle for Callum, crossing my fingers and toes that we couldn’t just source these sweets at Wing Yip. Some yummy noodles and then we were shuttled back to the hotel for our afternoon ‘nap’. I have spent the time listening to music and repacking my bags.
I’m off to read my book again! I started on ‘Thinking fast and slow” but its not proving to be much beyond 2nd year psychology. I’ve therefore settled on ‘The Song of Achilles’, another perspective on the same story told in ‘Silence of the Girls’ – I am getting to know the Trojan war rather well now.
Love from,
Kirsten
A little bit of a Hou 