The Wall

No, not The Great Wall. The Xián Wall, which surrounds the original city and was built sometime in the 1300's. Obviously not as long as The Great Wall, but it is wider.

I traveled to the wall with Jake. He's a recent addition to the staff and teaches US Geography. He hails from Denver but spent the last 2 years in the Peace Corps in Mongolia. We grabbed the #6 bus which takes you all the way there - 1 Yuan (16 cents). When we got about halfway there, one of the doors on the bus wouldn't open so the driver pulled over and we all had to exit and wait for the next bus. Thankfully, it wasn't a long wait, but we were already standing room and the bus we joined was standing room so you can imagine how intimate we became with the other passengers. We were warned to be wary of pickpockets on the buses so I kept everything secure in my front pockets...

Once we got there we were joined by Sky, the Chinese math teacher who has sort of adopted me and watches over me. He's 25 years old and speaks very good English. We walked down to Muslim St and got the dish that Xián is noted for - sorry I can't tell you the name. It's a soup with small bread cubes, mutton and a bunch of other stuff. They serve cloves of garlic on the side which people eat separately with the meal. It was really tasty, however I just tasted the garlic and left it at that... Muslim St is a long street with mostly restaurants and populated by a Muslim minority in China. Very colorful, very busy.

From there we went to the wall (entrance fee 54 RMB). Once on top, we rented bikes (40 Yuan) to go around. It is 13.74 km full circle.  I'm glad we did because at first we talked about walking it but in that heat the bikes turned out to be the ticket. It is very impressive - wide enough to drive 4 cars across with room left over... There are also some other historic buildings in the area - The Bell Tower and The Drum Tower - but we were told that they are impressive to see at night so we'll go back some other time. There are also some fountains there with a great night show so we'll catch that too.

We caught the #6 bus back without incident and had dinner at the local Dicos. Dicos is sort of like KFC. Sky said they had hamburgers, but it turns out their idea of hamburger means it has a hamburger bun. It was really a chicken burger. Not the best, but ok! I got home and went to bed!

Pics:  Top - view looking on top of the wall looking down the wall - it's a long ways!!
          Middle - A guard with a foreign tourist standing next to him
          Bottom - Muslim St

The previous night, Friday, we had a staff get-together on Barbecue St (a nickname because all the restaurants on the street barbecue their food and the roadway is closed off - street is filled with restaurant tables). It was a good turnout of staff and we had a great time. The waitresses brought us some cups with dice after dinner and we played a Chinese dice game until about midnight. I think we were the loudest table on the street and the Chinese had a good time staring at us! From what the returning teachers say, the group this year is MUCH better than last year. I'm sure it's the Oregon influence!