Hello again,

We arrived fine although the train station was crazy busy and the people all push and shove, they have no manners or personal space boundaries. We had to queue for a taxi which was like a big game of pushing and shoving we are all getting quite good at it now and battled our way to the front of the queue. The drive to the hotel was scary as the buses don't seem to worry about anybody else and coral the cars where ever the need them. After a heated debate with the taxi driver about me wanting the receipt for the taxi him talking Chinese, me English neither understanding the other. I obviously won!!! We went for a walk around with our guide and bought some souvenirs at the market Dan is quite good at bartering. We were then going to cycle around the city wall but Michelle Obama beat us to it and it was closed for her visit, Bet she didn't want to cycle so selfish she ruined our afternoon plans. In the evening we went to a free (we like free things) fountain and light show to music which was good but involved more pushing and shoving, we won again of course I pushed a man off the wall after he barged I front of me. The phrase if you can't beat them join them is quite relavent here.

Day 2 in Xi'an was that day Dan had most been looking forward to as we were off to see the Terracotta Warriors, they are about an hour away from the city. There are 3 pits with them in, pit 1 is the biggest and the most excavated they have discovered about 6000 warriors in different conditions. Some well preserved other completely destroyed. We next went to pit 3 where there are only 68 warriors, these are considered more important because of their uniforms. The final pit was pit 2 which has hardly been touched and is so cold and dark to preserve the warriors. They have scanned the ground so the know where the warriors are, some were in glass cases so we could get good pictures. It was really good and quite interesting after this we went for lunch at a locals house. I was not looking forward to this as I have been eating all things American since we arrived. However it was really nice and I tried some new things like roast potatoes covered in melted sugar, I think it's an aquired taste.

In the evening Joy had planned a karaoke night for us we had our own room and nearly everyone sang, it was a really good night surprisingly as we are not karaoke fans. On the walk home we saw some Michael Jackson impersonators so we sang along with them and the local people were filming us singing not them. Whoops!!!

We were woken at 7.30 by the school behind the hotel doing their PE lesson, the music was sooooooooo loud, but we had to get up anyway as we were getting a bullet train to Yichang. The train was so comfy and we had loads more space than on a plane. The top speed I saw on the screen was 303km/hr so it didn't take long to arrive at our next stop.