First impressions of Xi’an are good

(Lianna)

Allison: Li and Alex were not feeling well.. so Mark and I met Diana at 9 to go to Black Dragon Park. Our last chance to breathe the fresh mountain air of Lijiang..before hopping in the van, and heading to the airport. We started walking…on the way, we passed several people on their way to work in the town. Picture the quintessential Chinese park in your head… We arrived at the park and we ran into a large waterfall—the falls flow into the river, that flow into town and through the canals...  We then came upon a large pond... Jade Dragon Snow Mountain was in the background – and reflected in the water..stunning. Diana, Mark and followed a path around the pond…then walked back to the hotel..goodbye Lijiang..

Lianna: I puked again at breakfast and it sucked. But don’t worry, it was just a fluke. We went to the airport with Alex and I both feeling miserable. We thought we had a 4 hour flight from Lijiang to Xi’an, so after less than an hour when they told us to prepare for landing, we were all incredibly confused. We had no idea what was going on. Alex asked the flight attending if we were landing and she said Kunming, I nearly had a heart attack until she said “Connecting flight to Xi’an.” We still had no idea what was going on, so every time we were moved we just said Xi’an and waited for a yes. It might have been nice if someone had warned us about this. We finally got to Xi’an okay, and met the famed Richard…

When we got to Xi’an Alex wasn’t feeling good, so he stayed in, but the rest of us went to a Hot Pot dinner. Definitely the best dinner we’ve had in China. It was delicious, cool, and fun. They had tons of sauce stuff, and we each made our own sauce. Once we had our sauces we sat down at the table. Lettuce, Spinach, Chinese cabbage, thin noodles and thick noodles, potatoes, and Tofu were already waiting for us. Once we were sitting and ready to go they brought out lamb and eggs. We each had a small pot of boiling water. We put whatever we wanted into it and then poured our sauce on it. My sauce was soy sauce with chicken powder and a little bit of garlic… delish!  We are going back to this place again. YAY!

After dinner we went to the lantern show. That was awesome. We didn’t know what to expect, and the name is deceptive. We were expecting to see standard Chinese lanterns, or a performance, but we weren’t really sure. It definitely wasn’t like anything we were expecting. The best way to describe it is as parade floats, but they were made out of a thin cloth and had lights inside them. It was absolutely beautiful. So our first night in Xi’an was very good.

Shout out to Nat- HAPPY BIRTHDAY!