How ShiDa College deals with its mail…

These are some photos from our trip to the Terracotta Warriors Northeast of the Xi’an. Enjoy :)

Exploring Chengdu: Part 2- More shots taken while wandering around Chengdu. Click the pictures for info.

Exploring Chengdu:Part 1- Just some random shots from around the city. Click the photo for a description. 

Wenshu Buddhist Monastery-  One my favorites stops we made in Chengdu. Entrance was free and it seemed less like a tourist attraction and more of an everyday, lived-in kinda of space. Awesome temples and shrines and a really peaceful garden.

WuHou Temple & JinLi Street near the Tibetan District in Chengdu

Red Pandas! Pretty cool, but they didn’t seem that happy to be wet.

稻草人 playing a few covers at 惠风和畅音乐酒吧, a lounge near Xi’an sports Stadium.

Bikes, finally! Exploring the streets of Xi’an on foot was fun but as of yesterday my days of pedestrian living have abruptly come to an end. I had been looking for a bike for a while and just heard from one of my team members Muhan Z.  that there was a little bike shop nestled over at the new campus of Shaanxi Normal University (I’m currently living on Old Campus), so fellow Fulbrighter Christine C. and I took a trek over to check out the situation. After some searching for a while we finally came across the little pink bike storage building and the Bike Master and his dog “Hello” that ran it. The Shifu was really cool and hooked us up with some pretty decent hand-me-downs for 100 RMB each, which is about $16 USD. Part of the reason the price is so low is because so many people ride bikes here. Cycling isn’t the niche activity as it is in the U.S. and for most Chinese it’s a necessity. It’s not a Schwinn but it’s hell its not even a Yardsale special, and even though I’ve already had to make a few repairs I’m looking forward to riding it all over China for the remaining six months. (As long as it holds together)

And finally here are most of the members of the Li family that took me into their home during their most busy time of the year to feed me and introduced to Chinese culture. I won’t soon forget it.