Dumplings & Toilets, but not in that order

High: The mystery of Alden's one-day knee pain has been solved. The culprit is the squatting toilet. Specifically, squatting over a toilet while on a midnight train to Xian that is swerving violently. Also, this may or may not be too much information, but while Amy and I were in neighboring stalls and talking to each other, the following coversation took place:
Amy: [wearily] "I am not going to miss kneeling over a toilet."
Alden: [alarmed] "Umm, you are KNEELING?!"
(Amy wasn't kneeling but let this be a lesson to you all, no good can ever come of toilet holes.)

Low: Speaking of toilets, what we have discovered while using bathrooms all over China is that Chinese women simply do not believe in waiting in lines. Ever.
(From Alden -- "But it's MY birthday")
(From Amy, reminiscent of looking up at her mother in tears from the playground slide line, "but, when is it my turn?")
AHA: The advantage of traveling outside of Beijing is that we have the same guide for the entire time that we are in a city. This is giving us a chance to both get to know the guide and get a better sense of regional culture. We spent our lunch today discussing marriage in China. Traditionally, the financial burden of the ceremony falls on the man's family (no, Rob, Amy is not moving to China to get married). Also, there is no notion of a proposal -- once a couple has been dating for what is deemed an adequate period of time the parents simply say, "you should get married."

Since we last spoke, we've had quite the adventure! We had the most amazing dumpling feast in Xi'an -- Amy had vegatarian dumplings made especially for her. We drank beer and white rice wine, but not in the same copious amounts as the Chinese men sitting at the 3 tables around us! It was a time of great celebration, and so they were taking shots of their beer! Chinese power hour. Gong bei ["Bottom's up"]! We retired in our room de fish and enjoyed CCTV's coverage of the Olympics.

Early yesterday morning, we were startled awake by an insistant pounding accompanied by the shrill sounds of our doorbell @ 7.15am. "Hallo? You check out today!!!!!!!" <-- dear, sweet Jesus. I thought there was a fire or something was terribly, terribly wrong. Note: We weren't supposed to meet our guide until 9.30 and certainly weren't planning on being awake before 8.

Our breakfasts thus far have been in our hotels. They are buffets with a lot of Chinese elements including fruit, noodles and steamed bums....they also have had a random assortment of "American" additions like french toast, fried pototaoes, and something hard that was called a pancake. It's not our favorite meal of the day, but we're certainly not starving!

Most of our day yesterday was spent at the Terra Cotta Warrior Museum. Our guide, Nina was once again full of information as we toured all 3 pits where the clay men were discovered. If you don't know anything about this, google it. In short, briefly and to the point, the story is: 1974 man dig well to find water, pulls up strange clay head. He think this is god and put on tree to pray to. Jounralist from Beijing visit, see head, report to authorities. Fast forward through bureaucracy -- more than 7000 life size clay warriors, their horses, weapons & charriots were discovered and unearthed. The ruthless first emporer of the Qin Dynasty [600 AD] -- also creator of another world wonder, the Great Wall -- ordered the construction of the soldiers so that he would have an army to protect him in his next life. It took 4 decades and over 720,000 people to harvest, mold, fire & paint the clay men. The majority of the warriors have been uncovered but excavation is still clearly underway. What makes the warriors particularly amazing, is that they all have different facial expressions and armour. They also have a varitey of hairstyles and body positions, indicating their rank.

Our plane trip to Guillin was entriely uneventful save one small incident involving a muffin. Close your eyes (after you read this) and try to imagine.... Girl gets plate of delicious airplane food. Plate has some sort of chicken-rice dish, small salad with mystery meat, sanitary towel and inocuous looking brown muffin wrapped in airtight package. Girl is so hungry for delicious looking muffin. Muffin looks so soft and moist. Girl finish dinner and ready to enjoy muffin. After carefully opening challenging package, girl hold muffin close to face -- smells so good. But slippery muffin leaps from pinched fingers and flies toward girl's unopened mouth. Hit girl hard in nose. Girl not ready for leaping muffin.

Meanwhile girl number 2 patiently reading her book, sees leaping muffin out of corner of eye. This is strange. Such big muffin for one bite. Why is other girl throwing entire muffin into her mouth?

[We will now accept your guesses on which girl is muffin face and which girl is not.]
Also note, the muffin was the worst. muffin. ever.

Here we are in Guilin -- a city in the Guangxi province that has about 730,000 people and is most famous for its picturesque scenery. Staggering limestone mountains, 2 rivers, lakes and caves make up the face of this humid city. Today we visited Elephant Trunk Hill, FUBO Hilll, and Reed Flute Cave. We wish we could upload the pictures from our cameras, but are having some technical difficulaties and hope to do so when we return to Beijing (Aug 20). This is most definately our hottest day. HOT! AND HUMID!! Which made the cool temperature inside the cave most welcome. Rob -- Amy thinks the cave is the above ground version of the Blue Hole in Belize. It has huge stalagmites and stalagtites and one of the "rooms" was so vast that they hold concerts and banquets there!

[Congratulations, you made it. Thanks for reading :)]