Yesterday I was off sick from work and today I am off as well with this sore throat, cold, cough, pounding headache and everything aching. Luckily I have the hot water bottle that Matt brought over for me and I am on the last sachet of beechams. I am feeling very sorry for myself and wishing I was at home where it is easier to get medicine that I know what it is, everything here is in Chinese characters.
On a brighter note, I was woken up by a text this morning from one of the other teachers saying that my wish had come true. I didn’t have a clue what she was on about until she text me back saying that it was snowing! I had kept saying that I wish it would snow so I can get some photos of the great wall in the snow. Unfortunately I am not going to be in Beijing this weekend as I am flying to Xi’an tonight until Sunday to see the terracotta warriors. Although the way I am feeling right now, the last thing I feel like doing is getting on a flight!
The flight actually wasn’t anywhere near as bad as I expected it to be, it was 566 miles from Beijing to Xi’an and it took 2 hours, although at one point I didn’t think it was going to happen at all as a lot of flights had been delayed by the snow! Luckily my flight was only delayed by 30 minutes and I landed at Xi’an at 8.30pm. I had arranged an airport pick up by emailing the hostel and as I came through arrivals there was a sign saying Sam Evans (my friend who had booked the hostel on his card) I spent the 40 minute journey to the hostel trying to explain to the driver that my name wasn’t Sam, but the driver kept saying “look Sam” and pointing to buildings and saying a load of stuff in Chinese. I gave up in the end. Then when I got to the hostel they greeted me with “Hello Sam!” and I had to try to explain all over again, they finally got it when they took a copy of my passport and my friend, the real Sam, arrived 30 minutes later. In between this time I realised that I didn’t have enough cash on me and they don’t take cards so I had to go and find a cash machine (luckily there were a few just around the corner) and managed to get my first proper glimpse of Xi’an. The buildings were beautiful and from what I have seen so far, this is what I imagined China to look like.
I went to the restaurant at the hostel to wait for Sam to arrive for food as I realised that I hadn’t eaten anything all day, but was told that the restaurant closed at 11pm. By 10.55pm Sam still hadn’t arrived but was nearly at the hostel so I ordered for us with 2 minutes to spare! The waitress wasn’t happy and to say that the chef wasn’t happy would be an understatement, he stormed through the restaurant to the kitchen and the waitress looked at me like “now look what you have done”. When Sam arrived a minute later we fell about laughing at the whole thing. After dinner we went to reception and booked the tour for the terracotta warriors tomorrow and then spent what was left of the evening catching up on what we have been up to. We decided to call it a night by midnight as we had to be ready for breakfast at 8am and ready to leave at 9am.
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