the blog resumes... Xi'an Friday February 19th

Firstly, we're safely home and gradually working our way out of the stupor of the 14 hour time change, getting kids adjusted to some sort of similar sleeping schedule and the realities of life back at home, what no buffet breakfast and twenty different items placed in front of you without effort on a lazy Susan?  More on our return home in a later post - in the meantime, we resume with China - were we just there?  We continue with Xi'an, a city that we'll have to return to as we simply did not have enough time there.
We rose early after the most dreadful night in our smoke infested room and had a meeting time of 8 a.m.  Our suitcases had to be packed and ready to leave for the airport as they were transported there separately - slightly nerve wracking.  We had to ensure that our families luggage was correctly all identified to go to Shanghai as Laura Beth's family was returning to Beijing. After that was sorted we went to the Muslim market.  China has a Muslim population mostly going back to the Silk Road.  I think we were told that in a city of 8 million there are 20,000 Muslim.   We absolutely loved the experience of going through the Muslim market and took a bunch of photos of the street food scenes and wares for sale.  Since we were so early everything was getting started and people were having breakfast on the street which is apparently quite common.  Walking through the market we ended up at the Mosque and you can see the photos from that - see the lotus flower carvings on the ceilings of one of the little gazebo type structures.    As you can see the kids all had fun running in the courtyard area.   When we walked back Indigo and Isaac enjoyed looking at these birds that were in cages - some kind of singing bird - sad to me, but cute of Indigo with Isaac.   We were being hurried along when I think most of us would have loved to have been able to spend a little time shopping or looking - Laura Beth managed to pick up a gorgeous scarf.  
We got on the bus thinking we were off to see the Terracotta Warriors which was our primary reason for going ot Xi'an.  However, we had another stop, not on the agenda, at a "Jade Museum".  I stayed on the bus with the children and my dad went in for a while and did see the different types of Jade- some from mountain and some from river and learned the difference in the value etc. but ultimately it ends in a government run shop - the good thing is you know you're getting the real deal - the bad thing is that it's expensive and the worse thing was that we lost 1.5 hours there which ended up seriously cutting into our time at the warriors so that was a bit irritating - except for the shoppers in the group.  I must admit that I ultimately benefited, because after getting to Shanghai, David surprised me with a jade pendent of a peach which is for longjevity - hopefully this means he wants me to stick around.   After leaving there we went to lunch and then to the Warriors.  The warriors - soldiers and horses, are truly a wonder.  They date back to Qin Shi Huang - the first emporer of China.   They are dated back to 210 BC!  The were first discovered in 1974 by some farmers drilling a well.   They comprise warriors, chariots, horses, officials, acrobats, strongmen and museums.  It's estimated that there are 8,000 soldiers, 130 chariots and 520 horses, as well as 150 calvary horses.  Most are still pits.  The figures vary in height from 6' to 6'5 with the generals being the tallest.   No two soldiers are alike - which was ordered by the emporer - I think he was about 12-13 when the army first started being made and it's guessed that about 700,000 workers created the army whose purpose was to accompany the emporer to the afterlife so that he could rule another empire in the afterlife.   Needless to say, it's fascinating.   Flash photos in the pits are not allowed but Pit 1 had really great natural light so the photos came out farely well.   Credit to Granddad for the close-ups of faces taken at my request as I had no zoom with me.   It would have been nice to have time in the museum but there simply was not time except for a quick peek at the bronze chariots - quite frankly it was so packed with people about 6 people deep around the exhibits that we would not have wanted to stay too long anyway but we wished we had not felt so rushed.   The one thing that was truly exciting was that the farmer who found the warriors was there signing books!  Apparently this is something he comes and does each Chinese New Year so we were truly lucky.  All photo credits of the farmer are thanks to Laura Beth's family - there was a no photo sign but the farmer asked her if she wanted to take a picture so I am snagging those photos.  Also, if you're wondering about the photos of Ben and Drew with the Chinese teenagers and of us taking photos of the people photographing them - that was really cute.  Ben and Drew were like popstars and the kids wanted to have their photos taken with them so we photographed that and their paparazzi.   We raced to the airport where Laura Beth's family had the first flight to Beijing - they made it by a hair and then we caught our flight to Shanghai.   You can see that Indigo fell fast asleep on the bus - the positions in which she can sleep are astounding to me.   We transported her sleeping in the stroller but then had to wake her up to go through security - both to get her through and to fold the stroller up - what a disaster - she completely fell apart and then fell off the block on which they were wanding her and then Isaac cried hysterically - it was just a big mess, but we coped - barely.
We were met in Shanghai by our new guide Jimmy and were transported to the Crowne Plaza - which was very lovely.   After the debaucle in Xi'an we asked Jimmy to call ahead and ensure our room set up was accurate which he did.  It was late and we did not want to have problems.  Our whole floor was non-smoking - wonderful.   The only glitch was that we did not have a crib for Isaac so we called for one which arrived promptly.   Well, from the photos you can see that this crib would be on the instant recall list in America, not to mention would probably result in several law suits.  We placed Isaac in the crib, and the bottom promptly fell out and he crashed to the floor and got stuck.  We retrieved him and decided that he and Indigo would share the double bed.   We pushed a chair up to the side to try to prevent him from falling out and put Indigo on the other side with a pillow next to the night stand so she would not bump into the sharp glass corner.   I really felt like I had two siblings at that point because Indigo would say "he is not going to sleep" to which I would respond, "well, neither are you" and then she would say he was touching her and then he would mess with her hair but ultimately sleep overtook them both and I was very excited to get a picture of our two babies asleep together.   I don't think I mentioned this in Beijing, but we had crib failure there too.  The crib was delivered and we could see that it looked like an Ikea special with pieces of wood not quite fitting together and the next night about 4 or more spindles just completely fell out.   Our solution was to turn it around so that the gaping hole in the side of the crib was against the wall and that worked out for the rest of the stay there.  Something to be said for American crib standards even though plenty here still seem to manage to be recalled.    See photos from Xi'an and crib tale here:
 http://www.flickr.com/photos/7322989@N05/sets/72157623537757296/