Saturday, March 18th

Today, after being teased yesterday by the Shanxi Provincial Museum, we were finally going to see the Terra-cotta Warriors. The Terra-cotta Warriors. The ones you learned about in 5th grade and then sort of forgot about... yup, those ones. Some of us may

be a little rusty on the history of these warriors so let me try to polish it up for you...

Pretty much, The first emperor of China – Mr. Qin Shi Huang – had an epic tomb for himself built. Very similar to the pyramids in Egypt, except his tomb was for the most part

underground. In fact, the meaning of Terra-cotta is "made by earth". The emperor had many defenses set up in his tomb, and one of the more larger ones were the Terra-cotta Warriors. Another impressive defense he set up was a moat of mercury surrounding the very center part, where his body actually laid with all of his treasures. This moat of mercury is still keeping archeologists out of his tomb T

ODAY. They have read about the moat in ancient records, so they know it is there. But they do not know how much is there... so if they do uncover this moat, an unknown amount of deadly mercury would evaporate into the air. They also do not know how he obtained so much mercury, and how he managed to get it to that specific sport. It is to this day a mystery how he constructed such

a defense. I guess, it's like the same way Stonehenge was built....... aliens helped.

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To help build the suspense, they first took us to a small shop in Xi'an where they make replicas of the Terra-cotta Warriors for people to own. They showed us the impressive system of first, rolling out the clay...

...and then putting it into a mold, adding design features... and finally you get something that starts to look like this:

I sent a nice greeting to one of the warriors.

After spending a little more time there we finally headed off the place. The top dog. No replicas this time, the real deal. After getting past a parking lot you would expect to see at a small theme park, you see this dude:

The year was 1974 when an average farmer began to dig a well... after digging a few feet down, he discovered some pottery fragments.... Now today, we have an airplane hanger of an artifact. They first presumed there to be about 100 warriors covering an area

of about 50 meters. But they kept finding them, and now today they presume there to be over 8,000.

The warriors were constructed hollow, so they were actually in a wreck when the archeologists found them. Any fully in-tact warrior you see today has been placed back together by the archeologists, piece by piece. They leave some in ruins, for a reference.

In the very top right hand corner, you are able to see where the well was dug. Looking at its location, it's amazing to think that if he had dug the well just a little more forward, he would have never discovered the warriors.

Closer to the back, you can see where archeologists continue to try and piece back together the warriors.

Also in the middle section, you can observe archeologists still uncovering warriors! It makes you realize that this tourist attraction is still under a lot of work.

The emperor did not have a secret way for the workers to get out of the tomb after they built it. Instead, he had 720,000 workers buried alive with him. Nice guy...

In another building there was what looked like just waves of dirt. It turns out, when the archeologists discovered the warriors, they were painted with bright vibrant colors! But because of the sudden exposure the the sunlight and air, these colors vanished within minutes. So underneath these waves of dirt are warriors... but they do not what to dig them up until they have technology to preserve these colors. So for now, they sit here as "discovered yet undiscovered" wonders.

After several hours of taking in this amazing exhibit, we headed off to the Xi'an airport for a flight to Ningbo, where Justin's school is located. For those of you who missed the details about Justin... he is a friend of Kris Johnson who teaches english at a high school in the city of Ningbo, China.

Friday, March 17th

I awoke, surprising very well rested, on the train Friday morning. The few times I woke up in the middle of the night I fell right back to sleep with the train noises in the background. It's like when you fall asleep in a car and you tune into the sounds of the motor, and it becomes that restful noise that has you sleep soundly. Anyways... enough artsy writing... we arrived in Xi'an (pronounced: Shee-aun) around 8 AM.

We took a short walk from the train station to be welcomed by a lime-green bus!

They took us to the Shanxi Provincial Museum, located at the heart of Xi'an. This Museum was dedicated to depicting the story of finding the legendary Terracotta Warriors, found only a short drive outside of Xi'an. They had dozens of displays at the Museum, one displayed ancient pottery found near the warriors:

This display shows how they have yet to find any two of the several thousand warriors that have the same face.

Some more interesting figures found in the museum:

At the center of the museum was a large room with a high ceiling where you could sit and observe pieces of art. Very relaxing.

Alex Richichi deeply concentrated on a certain painting....

For lunch we stopped at a beautiful place where people could eat an watch a show. Unfortunately it was the middle of the day, so there was no show for us... but it was still a stunning place to eat.

After that we went to the concert hall to rehearse for our performance that night.

This was a very nice place that seated a little more then the theater in Beijing.

That's us!

That night we gave a standard performance.... but the experience.... was something unreal. Ask anyone from this trip and they will most certainly have a story from the "performance in Xi'an". While we sang the 2008 Olympic theme song, girls in the back of the room screamed as if it was an Elvis concert. After the performance everyone wanted to get a picture with us. Some girls were jumping up and down asking for a picture with me while at the same time saying "You cute!" I have never felt so good about myself in my life. I gave me email out to whoever asked for it... probably wasn't the best decision... but so far my email is still in tact!

That night was the best night I had on the trip. When I got back to the hotel my mouth hurt from smiling so much. That night, I realized how much the Chinese really do love Americans. Some went crazy for us. At points, it was hard to wrap my head around it all because here I am... honored to be experiencing their country.... but they were honored just for us to be there. We were celebrities.

Thursday, March 16th

Today was defiantly one of the more anticipated days of our trip. We were all well aware that today we were going to see the Great Wall of China.

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During the hour or so drive there... I was still trying to wrap my head around it. I am ACTUALLY going to see, step on, and climb THE Great Wall of China. The wall of walls. Humpty Dumpty would be in shame to this wall!

A quick side topic... on the way driving there I saw this chinese graffiti which I found really cool. I can barely understand American graffiti, so I have no idea what this says... but it's still interesting to know that other cultures have graffiti also... I don't know why they wouldn't but... whatever. It looks cool.

Anyways... back to THE Great Wall. We finally took a slight turn around a mountain... and there it was. Right in front of me. It was actually sort of weird... I mean, I was just looking at a big wall. But the knowledge of it's size, it's history, and its significance... made it that much more amazing. The fact that I could now tell my family, my college friends, my co-workers, my wife... that I have been on the Great Wall. It's something special.

The Great wall is over 5,500 miles long, and took around 2,000 years to build. Can you imagine our government starting a project like this today? Saying "Don't worry... we will finish it in a couple thousand years......."

The one thing we figured out very quickly is that the Great Wall is no leisurely walk through the park. If you have seen the new "Karate Kid" movie there is a scene where he is running across the Great Wall. Now I know why! Running across the Great Wall is possibly one of the best work outs you could get. It gets steep.

We all managed to take a group picture at one of the towers:

When I got to the end of the line, I realized how much the Chinese government had actually restored. The pile of rubble you see in the distance there is what the Great Wall would actually look like if not restored.

I gave my top-notch zen pose for the camera:

The Wall provides quite the spectacular view.

A panoramic of the Great Wall:

After absorbing all of the glory the Great Wall could offer us in a matter of a few hours, we headed back onto the bus. Next we were headed to a jade factory located a few hours away. Jade is the most highly respected gem in China. It is a huge part of their culture and that is why we went to this factory... to see exactly how much work goes in to making such incredible bracelets, earrings , and small figures. Never mind statues, like this one:

We were shown exactly how it all starts, as they slowly chisel away at it....

...Until it turns into something beautiful.

And if you have several hundreds of thousands of dollars laying around... you might be interested in buying this nice figure.

After the Jade factory we went to a big chinese grocery store and stocked up on snacks to help submerge ourselves in the chinese culture. Yay chinese junk food!

By that time it was getting late and we headed to the Beijing train station to take an overnight train to Xi'an! The Chinese people use the train system much more then we do, so even though traveling by train is considered a "lower-class" form of transportation, the train station looked like a massive palace:

After waiting about twenty minutes to board our train, we were able to move into our rooms of four beds – two bunk beds. The rooms were a little cramped, and moving around was not the easiest. But again, this was considered a "lower-class" form of transportation.

"Clikity-clak, clikity-clak..." the train would go. This was at first annoying and prevented me from getting to sleep, but it slowly turned into my lullaby. We slowly fell asleep in our small beds as the train rolled on for 13 hours, slowly working itself towards the city of Xi'an, a city famous for the discovery of the Terra-cotta Warriors. Saying our farewells to Beijing, we moved on to the more great adventures that lay ahead of us.