another day, another internet cafe. not that i'm getting many emails of note from my stateside friends. =(. thanks iv & mon for your emails! my travel companion, hammer, is going to be in china for about a year so he gets a lot of email. while all i get is spam and notes from my mom! =p

today was a travel day as we arrived in the city of xi'an. known for its terracotta warriors, the city isn't really a big hub like shanghai or beijing. as we walked around the city walls today (a huge wall surrounding the entire city) we got a lot of looks from the locals. thankfully, our hotel is on a major street and i should be able to buy some fresh clothes today. (there are nooooo washing machines in this country it seems-- and at this point i've refused to wash my socks or underwear by hand.)

no, i haven't been recycling-- i've just been making due. if i don't buy some new garments i might have to take the problem-- and the bar soap into my own hands. doh! tonight we had dinner at a muslim chinese joint. i really don't know much about muslims in china but there seems to be a pretty significant population. tomorrow we'll see the warriors and we'll return to the capital city of beijing on saturday morning.

although i've been missing my friends and family, this trip overseas has allowed me to see the beauty and differences between the us and china. on our train ride to xi'an we had a chinese native in our cabin and we spent most of the night discussing politics, economics, and our respective countries. although our ability to communicate was impaired, it was an insightful and educational evening. (for the sake of record, darryl's sentence structure was better than mine... but my vocabulary tended to be better than his---- hammer just asked all the difficult questions, while d & i tried to translate them into chinese.)

i'm not saying that i want to move to china but my eyes have been opened to a whole new world that i had little to no understanding of previously. ok.... that is as good a place to end this log as there is going to be. hope all of you have a great thursday! mine's is all done!