The world is my school today my classroom is in Xi'an.

ARRIVAL

The plane is delayed 4 hours because the air is so polluted there is not enough visibility to fly. That is bad! Then we go. Staring out the window in the airplane looking for something besides pollution. All I can see is the airplanes wing. I start thinking to myself, "I wonder when I'm going to see the land?" Then BOOM we land. When I look outside I can still barely see anything! When we get off the plane I could smell the pollution. I put my mask on quickly. When I get into the building it smells better but if I look into the distance I could still see pollution in the air. It was revolting. When we got outside again with our guide, Julia, she said that this wasn't all pollution. On top of the pollution there was a sandstorm. Now it's a 1-hour drive to the hotel.......... I just arrived at the hotel. When we get in the elevator on the way up we notice that you can see the city from in it. When we got to the 4th floor we saw the bellman and our room. It is one room that turns into two! After we settle in Mom has a question for all of us. Here it is, "Do we really want to stay here in all this pollution? I am really feeling sick, my throat hurts I've had lots of headaches and I can feel the pollution in my lungs! I really think we should leave sooner." I start to agree but then disagree, because we are only in Xi'an for one day and a half.

Well one day now because the half just ended.

OUR ONLY WHOLE DAY IN XI'AN

Does anybody agree with me that waking up can be one of the most tiring parts of the day? Well it is to me, especially when you have to wake up early. I had to wake up at 8:00AM, which doesn't sound early but with all of this time change from Japan, Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand, it makes me exhausted! Breakfast ended up being a quick one and we met Julia in the lobby. As soon as we saw her we headed out the door. First stop, a Buddhist Temple. When we first entered the temple we saw the Bell room and the Drum room. These were in every city in China to tell the people of the town the time and when the city gates would open and close. I first looked t the drum and thought, "WOW that's giant!" Then I looked at the bell and thought, "I'm going to faint!" They were both giant but when I looked ahead I saw something even bigger, a giant Buddha! It was made out of wood and painted with gold leaf. We kept on walking and found another gold leaf statue. This time it was of the goddess of mercy who is another form of the Buddha but special because it is the only one that is in the form of a woman. She is shown with SO many hands and everyone of them has an eye. This is so she can help you. After a little while we thought it was time to start heading back. On the way there was a store that sold cool paintings and these bronze lion statues. My mom loved the bronze lions and one of the paintings so we got them both, and the sellers said that if we bought the painting we would be able to get our names written in Chinese characters for free! At first Julia writes my nick name for me but she does it landscape. Everyone else's was portrait so I got my whole name written again in portrait so we can hang them all up together. After this it was time to go to the Terra Cotta Warrior copying factory. We saw the Warriors drying on the shelf and getting made as well. The government gave special permission to this place to copy the Warriors to sell them to tourists. When we went into the main room we saw the life-sized Warriors. They are taller then my dad! We just had to get one of these! Because we did we also got a little one for free! Now its back to the car on our way to the Terra Cotta Warrior museum to eat lunch and see where the Warriors were first found. Lunch was good. When we left we started with what they call the 3rd Pit which is where the last Terra Cotta Warriors were found. There were around 200 warriors in here and it was crazy! Some they left how they found them and others were rebuilt because they had broken and put as they were standing originally. It was amazing! Afterwards we went to see a little movie about why the Terra Cotta Warriors were made and who made them. I learned that the first emperor of China ordered his tomb to be made and then he was in a war, after the war he thought that he needed something to protect him in his after life. This gave him the thought of making warriors out of terra cotta. His tomb took two decades to build and he died before that. The warriors had to go in to storage while the tomb was finishing being built. During another war, people came into where the warriors were being stored and lit the wooden roof and walls on fire. This made the roof collapse on the warriors and when the earth covered over that the warriors were hidden. Thousands of years after that, farmers were digging a well for irrigation and when they pulled up a bucket of dirt, they found a Terra Cotta Warrior head in the bucket. The next pit was pit number 2. It had around over 3000 warriors in it, both left broken and put back together plus there were many more still unexcavated. They have not dug them up because when they did the first batch they lost all their color so they need to figure out how to do it without that happening again before they proceed. This pit was giant! Among the warriors were also horses. Some were also left broken and some put together again. It's just like Humpty Dumpty!

The most amazing thing about the warriors to me is that they have so much detail to them. When they have close ups to see you can see braids in their hair and a pattern on the bottom of their shoes! There are several different types of warriors, the kneeling archer, a horse, the general, a regular soldier and a sacrifice soldier. The sacrificing soldiers were in the front 3 lines and had no armor and always died first. They were all so interesting in their position and their facial expression. Last was pit 1, which was slightly smaller, it has 2000-2500 warriors in it. This one is very deep and has a lot of horses as well. It is only half uncovered so you can see the bamboo mat and dirt on top of the soldiers as they were place in the ground at the tomb 2000 years ago. When we left the museum we went back to the hotel. We were all having some bad reactions to the pollution by then- real bad.

What a great day and a half in Xi'an, except for the fact we could not breathe.

<3 World Rings Bell