Sunday, August 28

xining

we're back home and trying to adjust to real life. it's a little rough. between jet-lag, stomaches that are still a little bit off, and kids who are used to grandparents - well, you can imagine. but is good to be home. it was good to be gone, good to get away, good to see marty and yaqin, good to see amanda, good to have a vacation good to be travelers. but it is good to be home.

so. a quick re-cap isn't really possible. so you'll have the privelge of reading several posts about the trip, complete with pictures. so first - xining.

xining (pronounced she-ning) is the "town" that marty and yaqin live in. they say town, i say metropolis. it's about 6 million people, which in china qualifies as a town. i tried to explain to yaqin that little rock, which is a capital city, has about six tall buildings downtown. just a little different.

we spent the majority of our time here. we didn't really do anything particularly exciting, but rather lived life with marty and yaqin. we also got to see our dear friend, amanda, who lives there too. our days basically revolved around eating and sleeping. we'd all sleep in (well, except for jason. i think he was annoyed with us most mornings), then we'd have lunch with friends and dinner with more friends. the in-between times included a lot of walking around, shopping at various markets, sometimes visiting people, and cooking.






and man, was the food good! i was a little nervous, because i'm not a super adventurous eater. i like american chinese food, but i knew ahead of time that is not what we'd be eating. and thank goodness that's not what we were eating. because the food was a kazillion times better. yaqin is an excellent cook. we went to several great restaurants as well and even hole-in-the-wall places were delish. so it worked out well that food was one of the main themes of our time in xining.






coming up: fun times with amanda, the adventures of buying train tickets, how to survive a 24 hour train ride, beijing and beyond, and the most awesome picture from our trip.

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