The best part of today was the breakfast. The culture shock had definitely hit me and I’m definitely ready to go to Shanghai then head home. Today, we drove an hour and a half to visit the Terra-Cotta Warriors. I thought it was so cool to finally see the warriors that I had seen for years in my history textbooks. They were much larger than I thought, but they were preserved very well. The group then walked around several different exhibits before heading to lunch.

Lunch was surprisingly good. It was a buffet style with many delicious options. I really enjoyed the salad, watermelon, and noodles.

The worst part of my day was being treated like a zoo animal. We were followed around all day by people taking our photos and staring at us. The people taking pictures were not politely asking. Instead, they were just shoving cameras in my face or running into me trying to take selfies with me. Dr. Li explained to us that more people in Xi’an were taking pictures of us because many of them are from the country and have never seen foreigners.

The group then traveled to the City Wall to ride bikes together. This sounded nice and relaxing, but I was very wrong. The bike run was an eight mile loop that was on the bumpiest path I had ever ridden on. We barely made it back on time to take the bus to dinner. Luckily we had worked up and appetite.

Dr. Li was nice enough to treat all of us to a sixteen course traditional dinner. Eight is a lucky number for the Chinese, so eight cold dishes and eight hot dishes were served. I’ve stayed away from most of the fish dishes on the trip so far, but the fish served tonight was really delicious. It tasted like an orange chicken version of a fried fish. I also enjoyed the corn and greens.

I fell asleep shortly after getting back to the hotel because we had to leave the hotel at 6 to take the high speed train to Shanghai!! I have a feeling that I’m going to like Shanghai the most out of the places we are going. Dr. Li told us that Shanghai is like the Manhattan of China!