so ive dissappeared over the weekend to xi'an! the trip was crazy!!! and really tiring too.....
i got to check out the terra cotta warriors.. so now ive basically covered all the places i want to see in china! :)
we also got to visit the very first christian pagoda (dao qing temple) in china which was only found in 1998.... to get there we had to walk for 20mins thru hills filled with cornfields. thank goodness the weather in xi'an was amazing and the walk was really pleasent. the villagers there had a wonderful time trying to figure out if i was a chinese or "foreigner". -wat i realised this trip to 
hongkong is that i get more attention from the locals be it in china or hk for being a yellow skin and hanging out with the whites. i mean u would think that the people who wld be getting the attention shd be the delia (a gorgeous african) or blair (a pretty ginger head) or the blondes in my group but actually im the one who gets the stares of dislike/distaste. im slowly getting use to it-
stepping into xi'an really reminds me of all the bad things i absolutely hate about china.... eg the stinky restrooms u can smell frm a mile away, me having to speak in broken mandarin or else nothing will be able to move and work.
so the trip started out on friday early early morning at an ungodly hr of 530am.... our flight was at 830am in shenzhen airport so we had to leave hkbu by that time on a coach otherwise we would not be able to catch our flight. thing is that most of the international students (inc me) went out clubbing the nite before and i only got back at arnd 4? so i took a quick power nap and dragged myself out of bed 
45mins later
got to the airport in one piece still half awake. iga (the teacher in chage of us pepp students) who was the most awake tried figuring out where to get our tickets but unfortunately his mandarin wasnt very good so i had to step in... half awake, at 7 in the morning and converse in chinese! for all my friends who knw me.... u knw how bad my chinese is but yet i was the best available... thinking back its really quite funny but it wasnt tt friday morning... imagine me speaking chinese! argh haha... so tt was the start of our journey
getting to xi'an, we did the usual touristy things but the terra cotta warriors really made the trip worth going even thou it was really tiring.... having to be the translator for the group when the need arises. haha i havent spoken this much chinese for the longest time!
as much as i hated learning chinese back in spore, im only starting to appreciate it more and more now - doesnt mean that i want to learn it again- but without this ability, i think this trip would haf been one HUGE mess. china's not like france where the people chooses not to speak english, but the locals here jus dont knw how to speak it so no matter how hard u try, there's bound to be mis-communication.
so enuf abt xi'an
