6

So we flew into Xi'an in the very early morning hours on Monday. It was a 2 hour flight, and a 1 hour bus ride to get to the Terra Cotta soldier place. A little farmer was out digging a well in 1974 (?) and he found some pottery, which I guess wasn't that big of a deal because they had found pottery in the area before. Then digging some more they found parts of human bodies in pottery, which was strange. He was with some friends, and they were afraid of upsetting their ancestors, or the people who had been entombed in the area, but the little farmer decided to surrender the stuff to the government of China to see if it was of value. They unearthed THOUSANDS of soldiers, made of terra cotta, and horses. It is now like the eighth wonder of the world. The little farmer is still alive and was there signing his autograph. He wouldn't let you take his photo though, and my friend Kellie tried to take a secret picture and he knew she was doing it and covered his face with a fan.
The soldiers were cool. But I didn't need three hours to look at them.
I guess some German student was obsessed with the soldiers, and in November he came in to the tour in a normal outfit, but once inside he changed into a costume where he looked just like one of the soldiers and jumped down in the pit with them and it took them a long time to figure out who he was because he looked just like one of the soldiers.



Whatever, anyway I saw a picture of Chelsea Bill and Hillary Clinton in among the soldiers and I got mad because why did they get to go down there, and I couldn't?
Google terra cotta soldiers xi'an, see what you find, it's pretty interesting. They are 2200 years old and were commissioned by the first emperor of the Ming (?) dynasty. Maybe Qing dynasty, I can't get them straight.
I'm going to skip ahead because I have to get going, but today in Shanghai we went to a market and were given 40 minutes of free time. After I got a Starbucks, yes they have Starbucks here, and bought Murphy a T-shirt, I headed back to the meeting place. But I took a wrong turn and was LOST for 25 minutes. I tried not to cry, but then I realized I had no cab fare, didn't know the name of my hotel in Shanghai, and I was late to the meeting place by 10 minutes. Also, this market was like a maze. I kept winding around and around and couldn't find my way to where we were supposed to meet, and in China there are always MILLIONS of people EVERYWHERE. People like crazy, there are 17 million people in Shanghai and it was like they were all in the market today. Finally I asked some little girls where was the Yu Garden, and I found my group. I didn't cry until I got up to the group and everybody was there waiting for me, and I was safe and then I started balling.




Dad, I know you don't want to hear that story, but it ended well. And truly, I could have called home to mom and she would have given me my hotel name, and I had a credit card, so I would have been OK, I just really didn't want my group to worry about me.
SHANGHAI IS SO AWESOME.
I would live here.

I will write more later.

Love you all -
Kady Diane Ling Ling