May First - Xi'an, Shaanxi

Thursday morning....awake at 6am to catch train to Xi'an. I was so stressed about having to sit on a hard seat for 22 hours, I wasn't even looking forward to the trip. I got on the hard seat car by myself but not without an audience. There was never a moment that at least one person wasn't staring at me, talking about me, laughing at me. I prayed that my aussies would find a way for me to hang with them in the hard sleeper car. After ten minutes of squirming and pretending to sleep Martin showed up to escort me to their car. The trains are awesome. Well I generally love trains but in China they're awesome. The people are so sweet. I love the Chinese. (this opinion WILL vary, there are good days and bad).

Our conductor was SO fucking funny. I haven't met a Chinese with this kind of sense of humour before - really weird and awesome. He comes over to us and says "do you like my pose?"
(we had a translator) and then proceeds to pose in front of us, and then "I'm not allowed to socialize with passengers" Later on he pops back in and makes a really weird grunting noise and says "Don't look at me I'm shy!" super meanly. Such a freak. I loved him. And he helped me find someone who was willing to sell me his bed for a small fee. Martin and I got into the beers around dinner time and continued until midnight. He's replaced my dad for a Gin rummy partner and my girls for a beer drinking companion. I really gotta quit the beer. But it's so cheap! fuck.
I was convinced that the train would be really late because most of the ride was spent in Shandong province (where Qingdao is) and there were two more to go. But sure enough at five am the ticket lady poked me awake (I shouldn't say poke I should say jerk really hard) and we had about 5 mins to get our shit together and get off the train.

Arriving at the station was a litte chaotic, but had nothing on Mexico City bus station or airport. It was five thirty and we headed over to the hostel. It's a really nice place, super quiet and relaxing, clean too. They have a nice cafe with proper breakfast and internet (that's too expensive). Yesterday we just sort of checked out the city - there are old walls still up surrounding the city, and if you pay ten kuai you can go up on top of them (they are about 12 meters high and 14 meters wide - you could drive a car on it if you could get it up there) and walk around. We met up with a 19 year old auzzie guy named Adam who's a friend of this guy Peter who I'm travelling with. Adam's living in Xi'an teaching and studying Chinese. He'a little abbrasive but cool. He has the same syndrome as Colin, where he acts like he's Chinese - and almost demands to be treated like a Chinese, but not really. It's kind of fucked up and I'm still analyzing it myself. Speaking of Colin, I feel really bad about writing that stuff, but I'm frustrated with this situation a little bit . I miss him, and can't wait to get back to see him.

Anyway so Adam took us on a wild goose chase of the Muslim market and I really got that dick waggling feeling again - girls following a bunch of guys around who don't know what the fuck they're doing. It's really frustrating. I'm PMSing which really sucks, because I'm embarrased of my bad moods around people who don't really know me. I feel extra bad, cause I don't want the Australians to think I don't like them. These guys have great great senses of humour. This one dude Peter absolutely kills me. We've been laughing a lot.

Oh god - and I forgot to mention - DON'T WORRY MOM - the first cab we get into in this city (not counting the one from the trainstation) gets in a fucking accident two blocks from the hostel. I thought he was driving a little crazy (which in normal terms means extremely fucking recklessly) but then shrugged it off untill homeboy smashed into the van in front of us. Eryn smacked her face on the bars that seperate the passengers from the driver, but that was it. There was no blood, or even swelling - a little shock. I was convinced that it was one of those scams there they blame the foreigners and then make us pay so I suggested we get out and walk away, which we did and the cabbie didn't really seem to notice. It's like in Flirting with Disaster - "They bump your car and then when you pull over they mutillate you and steal all your money"

So basically we spent the day exploring the city - it's really dusty and you constantly get shit in your eyes and the city is so much dirtier than Qingdao - I didn't realize everyone was telling the truth when they say "Qingdao is beautiful? Yes, it's so clean!"
I got my sister a cool little gift and I will get her more, it was her birthday yesterday so