More Xi'an

After visiting the warriors (that took up most of the day), we went back to the city and decided to do some more exploring while we had some daylight. We went up onto the city walls, which encircle all of the original city and are surrounded by a moat. The walls are BIG. They're probably 20 meters high and about 10 meters wide at the top - thicker at the bottom. You can rent bikes on top of the walls and ride around, which looked like great fun if it weren't so cold. So instead, we just walked around for a little bit and enjoyed the sights from high off the ground.

Later that night, we went with some other people we met on our warrior tour (they're also English teachers in Korea) to see and water and light show. The show is supposed to be China's biggest water show, but it really wasn't anything to brag about. I got bored of it after about a minute (especially because it was so cold! See a theme here?). But the show was located in a plaza next to the Big Goose Pagoda, one of Xi'an's most famous sites. So at least we got to see a nice attraction while we were there.

After the water show, I started feeling my cold rise up again. So I ended up spending the rest of the night and most of the next day in bed. There was a lot more things that I wanted to see in Xi'an that I didn't get to. The next day while I was laying in bed trying to get better, I decided to take part in an ancient Chinese tradition: acupuncture. The hostel I was staying at had a Chinese doctor that could come and preform various Chinese treatments, such as acupuncture, cupping, toxin scraping and massage. My back was really bothering me and I had the cold and I knew this was going to be the cheapest acupuncture I could ever get, so I went for it. I got a little freaked out when he quickly jabbed a needle in my cheek and then poked it around a little bit. He put four needles in me (two in my face, two in my back) and it was a little scary, but I got through it and had my first acupuncture experience.

That night, we took an overnight train from Xi'an to Beijing. It took about 11 hours and we got beds in a "soft sleeper." There were 4 bunks in our little room which we shared with a Chinese man and woman. They went to sleep right away and Jason and I tried to go to sleep after about an hour or so. Lucky Jason slept through the night just fine, but I hardly slept a wink. It didn't help being sick, and then our car got incredibly hot and I was sweating all night long. And with the noise from the tracks and being jerked around, it just wasn't a good combination of things...