A Sweaty Sunday

Author: Gabriella M
Location: Xian
We woke up early Sunday morning to another full day of touring and headed downstairs for breakfast, which consisted of traditional Chinese food. Then we rushed back upstairs to pack up our things and meet the group in the lobby, pumped and ready to go. We started out our day by trekking to the old city wall, along which we rode bikes for nine miles, appreciating the beautiful vistas, wind in our faces, good exercise, and great company. I rode with Jessica, Sam, and Steph. We took pictures and talked about our friends, family, and lives back home. Unfortunately, I got a pretty nasty sunburn out of the experience and the weather report for that day said that it was 50 degrees Celsius! While watching Mulan and attempting to change out of our disgusting clothes, we headed over to a nearby dumpling restaurant to grab some lunch. Next we headed over to the bustling Muslim street market, which was made up of two main streets, the snack street and the souvenir street. We were surrounded by bicycles, cars, the shouting of vendors, and colors of scarves, tshirts, and everything in between. The narrow cobblestone pathways wove in and out as we bargained with the vendors, sometimes putting up a pretty strong fight. After shopping, we headed back to the train station for our return trip to Beijing. As a goodbye gift, our tour guide Daniel gave us really good local peanut and walnut candy and Callie won the surprise gift of a really cool black and white watch. We made our way onto the train for a twelve hour ride back to our flat, sad to leave the wonderful city of Xi'an, but glad that we went to such cool places and got so much closer to our fellow Lifeworkers, but most importantly, life long friends.
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