Thursday, June 7th - Terra Cotta Soldiers Day

• Constantly getting ripped off
• Today I bought 6 dumplings but instead of giving me the 6 I asked for, the lady gave me 5 but still took the money for 6
• I only realized it when I was walking down the street and after I ate 2 I thought I had 4 more but I looked down and the words, “What the hell? Where did I drop it?” came out of my mouth
• Then I realized, “Oh, I got ripped off AGAIN!”
• It’s not like I could have went back after walking for 300 ft. to get my money back but now I know to count my dumplings
• I rely too much on that lonely planet guide for trying to find things
• The Lonely Planet guide said that the buses for going to the Terra Cotta soldiers was where all the cars parked which for some reason when I left my hostel I thought that would be enough but I was dead wrong
• Xi’An railway station is huge and saying “just go to where the cars are parked in the train station” is kind of like trying to find the right floor of the Empire State Building without knowing the office you’re looking for
• I ended up following a German tour group thinking that they probably know what’s up but then they went way far away from the train station and then I just felt kind of awkward being the only one who didn’t laugh at the tour guides’ jokes in German
• I did end up finding the right bus
• And I’m glad I did too because I ended up passing by the German group as they entered when I was already half-way done so take that you Europeans!
• If I ever open a bus business, I’m operating it Chinese style
• This bus had the door open the entire time from the time we went from the railway station to the time we got to the final destination (except for on the highway) so people would just walk up on the street, pay the fare, and hop on
• This is actually how I got back to Xi’An from the terra cotta soldiers because I got lost leaving the museum trying to find the buses and I waved down this random bus, hopped in, asked if it went to the Xi’An railway station, they said yes, and I got a 7 RMB ride
• Plus the whole "no seatbelt" thing probably cuts down on costs too
• Capitalism is alive and well in China
• They actually made you pay to use a restroom in the Terra Cotta Museum (1 yuan)
• I only found out later that I was the unfortunate one happening to pick the only restroom in the entire park that charges a fee, but at least I can say that I was probably in the only restroom in China that smelled like lemon breeze instead of something heinous
• Fun trying to fend off the tour guide swarm
• I was approached by one nicely-dressed Chinese lady who spoke pretty good English and I was asked for 150 RMB if she would be my tour guide
• I told her that I made it this far with my basic Chinese skills so I think I’ll be fine from hear
• Then she said, “But you not get full meaning of Chinese culture no tour guide”
• In my head I thought, “You mean the Chinese culture of ripping off foreigners?”
• Then I thought, “Based on the fact that she just made 3 grammatical errors in 1 sentence, I can firmly establish the fact that I’ll be ok without a broken English tour”
• The terra cotta soldiers were pretty cool
• I was expecting something massive after 15 years of advertisements via my world history textbooks but it was alright
• It was impressive, but because they only opened one pit of the actual soldiers who weren’t broken into a million pieces, I was underwhelmed

• I’m glad I went in reverse order so that it went from “whoo->wow!->WOW!” instead of the other way around
• The chariots were cool but they should be at the front of the museum and then the big finale should have been the terra cotta soldiers (Chinese capitalism has a lot to learn)
• The part I thought was funniest was how the guy died
• In the movie they show you at the tour they say that the emperor for whom the mausoleum is built for, “died unexpectedly on an inspection tour”
• I thought yeah right, it was probably one of the 750,000 laborers who he probably under-employed that “unexpectedly” dropped a brick on his head
• Failed girlfriend attempt
• So I was standing just like I always do in the smoking area of the train minding my own business when this swarm of guys just wanted to start talking to me (about 8 of us were in this area half of the size of maybe 3 rows of airline seats)
• They asked me if I had a girlfriend and that’s when the fun began
• Every time a girl passed they tried to set me up with that girl and I tried to explain to them “NO NO, I DON’T WANT YOU” in a way that was nice 
• Finally on the third girl they gave up and luckily I got out of it
• I don’t feel so bad now about my lack of ability to differentiate Chinese people
• They had this Chinese show up in the cabin of the train about some guy who (from what I could gather) was trying to get rid of a girl
• I had the thought that it was terrible of me to think, “Man, I can’t really tell the two main guys apart” but then later on in the show I saw the one guy trying to get rid of the girl see a guy who had the same name as him and looked kind of like him so they did a switch-a-roo on the girl
• I felt a lot better about myself when I saw that
• Riding a regular seat was a terrible decision
• So I missed out on the chance to get a hard or soft sleeper because I bought my train ticket from Xian to Beijing too late, so I had to take a hard seat on an overnight 14 hour train
• I didn’t realize that some people have the bright idea to sell food at 11 pm at night which absolutely pissed me off because every time I was just about to nod off I hear some random food items being yelled in Chinese “EGG RICE VEGETABLES 15 DOLLARS!”
• Then people just made fun of me when I tried to speak to them in Chinese
• It lasted for half an hour and I knew people were making fun of me looked at me, said something (some pointed), and laughed
• I finally said, “I give up”
• Got about 20 minutes of sleep
• I was sitting beside a fat guy and you can imagine how crammed we were for space