Hello Friends and family!
Today is my last day in Xi'an and I'm kinda sad to go, it's a lovely city that has by far the best food that i've tasted yet. Yesterday we awoke to poring down rain. As we headed out to the terra cotta warriors I slipped and fell super hard onto my tailbone. The slippery walk got me! After sitting for about 30 seconds I couldn't hold up the group and got up and bit back the pain, plus I had to see the warriors! Riding the city bus out to the site was hard, I just wanted to puke because of the pain but again, I'm on vacation and not going to complain so I pushed on. Thankfully I'm with a super supportive group that watched me for the rest of the day. Juanita is an accupuncturist back in Australia and offered to do a bit of pin work on me if I needed it (I just may take her up on that offer!). I'm glad I pushed on since the warriors were pretty cool. One of the pits that we viewed they are still uncovering warriors and horses and are actively still doing excavation. The museum was also interesting, pretty much a bunch of propaganda about how great a job they are doing and all sorts of retoric. The contrasts to the US are amazing, standing back and observing has become my favorite past time here (besides eating everything in sight!). After taking the city bus back into Xi'an we headed over to the Muslim quarter and bartered away for a few souviners and other items. I have to say I'm really bad at this! I just don't really know what I'm doing and I'm horrible at being pushy. After dinner we walked back and ran into the same festival in front of the city gate. They had these dancers and singers in groups around the park along with some simple fair games (like throwing a ring over a ceramic object). The group dancing was my favorite, people had umbrellas, scarves, feather fans waving in the air and they would move in and out of formation in this long entertwining line. Awesome!

Today we couldn't get an organized ride out to a tomb we wanted to visit so it's just been a lazy free day around town. It's also the first day I've felt homesick. Not homesick like I want to go home more like I miss the people in my life and just want to connect with anyone. As wonderful as traveling is it also makes me feel alone, since I don't have the ability for comfort (am I just a freak for feeling like this?) or the intimacy of sharing my adventures with others who know me. But again, I'm happy to be here, I just need to forget about home I guess. But on the bright side I spent a part of theafternoon with Adam eating our way through the muslim quarter again. We walked down a hutong that we hadn't explored yet and had a culinary orgy! So much food and I wanted to try it all! Every few feet I had to get a steamed dumpling or sample the piles ofseeds and nuts or snack on the sesame candies. Finally I was so stuffed that I couldn't eat anymore yet there was so much more food to try! Adam kept calling me fatty but truly he is the piggy! I love the food here, I know I keep saying that but really it's so freaking good! I'm goingto be posting more pictures, some mine and some from my travel mates. Oh, did I mention they rock? Yeah, very fun and cool! I miss you all but i must get some more food...