My Weekend

Finally....I get a weekend off from school (not including the holiday I had not too long ago haha). Well on Thursday the girls I live with told me they were going to Xi An to pick up some winter clothes from their University. I asked them if I could go with them and they said "...sure, why not ^_<". I really just wanted to leave Zhen'an for a little bit but I also knew that if the four girls weren't around I would be pretty board.

Not sure if had said before but the girls names are Yomi, Barbara, Smile and Nan. Often we keep calling each other names from the Television Show, Journey to the West. Its a little ironic that we do this because this blog is based on that concept but in reverse. Most of the time they call me Wukong because I always copy Wukong when he says "...sifu" haha. Smile is the horse because she is kinda white and Yomi is often the fish man and Barbara is the pig. However Nan often is referred to, as many characters from the show.

On friday we bought tickets at around 48 yuan for both tickets, to Xi An and back. We left Zhen'an at around 8pm and arrived in Xi An at maybe 10:30pm. We were not able to get seats on this train so we had to stand up. Although we were standing it was quite funny because we were playing silly games with each other. Another thing Barbara and Yomi kept telling me there was no juice in Xi An and I could only drink Beer or Water. I was thinking they must be lying so I asked some random woman sitting behind us. I said "...can I buy juice in Xi An?" and the woman replied "...yes". I said to Barbara "...shame, I can buy drink" but Barbara seemed to think the woman could not speak English and that is why she said yes. So I asked the woman "...is your name Mary?" and the woman replied "...no", but Barbara still thought she could not speak English so I just asked her "...do you understand English?" and the women said "...yes I understand English ^_<". I was laughing mainly due to the fact that Barbara was now very embarassed because she thought the women didnt understand what we were talking about haha.

While on the train Smile befriended some guy who happend to work in a computer shop. I thought to myself cool, maybe he can help me get a discount on a laptop. However we did not really talk about that but they did get his card. We ended up playing a game with this guy instead of talking about computers. Basically Smile would tell the guy something in English and then he would say it to me to see if I could understand. Then the same thing happend with Yomi and I but surprisingly he seemed to understand what I was saying haha. When we arrived in Xi An the girls took me to a hotel to stay. The room was 178 yuan but because of the time and some negotiation from the girls the room went down to 120 yuan. The room was quite good and I had my own bathroom with shower. I only stayed one night in this hotel and the girls (well just Barbara and Nan) came to pick me up in the morning.

That day we just walked around Xi An, we went to the Bell Tower (or rather walked around it) and went to the Drum Tower (haha I dont know what its called). We then went to the Islamic Street, if you didn't guess by the name this is where all the Chinese Muslims hang out. They have shops and restaurants all along this street. Near the Drum Tower we saw this man flying a kite. The kite must have been maybe 15cmx15cm but on the string there were 30 kites all flying at the same time. At the time I was thinking wow I want to do that. The man then gave Nan the string and she was flying it for a bit. We decided to buy one and try it for ourselves, but when we tried to fly them it did not appear as easy as it did when the man was doing it. After several atempts at trying to fly the kite we decided to call it a day.

Barbara and Nan took me to a place called Ginwa which is the place to find all the expensive designer items in Xi An. We went in and I was shocked at how expensive everything was, most of the items were comparable to the prices in London. I thought to myself this place is a rip-off. We left pretty quickly without buying anything as you'd might expect.

Later that day we decided to eat at KFC because there isn't one in Zhen'an and I kinda missed having junk food. While at KFC we basically stayed for hours to waste time. We had decided to go Karaoke but at 12am so this was the reason we were wasting time. We also had the idea to stay at Karaoke for hours until the morning to save money on me staying at a hotel.

At around 6:30pm we left KFC and went to the girls university. Their university was called "Xi An Normal University" don't ask me why its called normal because I dont know. Most of the students attending this unversity want to become teachers. I went to their canteen to have some dinner, I told Nan I wanted Chow Mein but I ended up getting Chow Fan for some reason. I didnt really mind that much because the rice was alright. By this time it was only maybe 8:00pm so we had to kill some time before we went Karaoke. The girls introduced me to some of their friends and we hung out with each other in the school grounds playing games.

At around 11:00pm we all gathered ready to go to karaoke. At this time however there were very few buses running and the walk to KTV took around 15 mins. The road was pretty dead, very few cars and no people what so ever. We finally managed to arrive at KTV at around 11:30. It cost just 80 yuan and all six of us could stay there until 6:30am. There were a a fair amount of people in KTV at this time and as per usual they were surprised to see a black foreigner in this place lol.

Once we were in the room I did not manage to sing that much mainly due to the fact that 95% of the songs were in Chinese and the English songs on there were kinda crap. It was a pitty I only knew Japanese songs otherwise I think I could have sung many songs that night. Shortly after getting in the room I began to feel tired as did the others. Everyone began to fall asleep but it was so uncomfortable trying to sleep on that big sofa. I kept falling in and out of sleep and my neck started to become stiff, but it was a funny experience sleeping in karaoke.

At around 6:30am the KTV staff came in and told us to leave. We all went back to the University but the girls left me and then pawned me off onto one of their friends. But I will let them off because they had things they needed to do in Xi An. Their friend was sweet and was happy at the chance to practice her English with me since she was an English major. Later that day she called up her other friends and we all played table-tennis and badminton for a bit. The Chinese are very keen on playing sports, at this time though I was feeling quite tired. I was practically half asleep.

One of the girls with us told me that she was a friend of Smile's and they are roomates. There was another girl with her that went by the name......shit I forgot her name and the other girl....im sorry TT__TT. But anyways she was told by Smile to look after me and take me where ever I want to go. I thought ok thats sounds cool. But because of the time constraints we could no go many places. In the end we went back to the Bell Tower but instead of KFC that day I had Mac Donalds instead hehe. Normally I don't eat that poison but that day it felt so good to have some junk food haha.

I told her that I wanted to buy a laptop so we went around looking for one. We ended up in the shop Gome looking for one but the majority of them were too expensive and comparable to prices in England but the only thing was that the models were old. So in the end I did not buy anything.

She then took me back to the train station in the afternoon to meet up with the other girls. I told her thanks for looking after me and she said "...no worries ^_^" which was nice. We all got on the train but luckily this time we had seats so we could have a good rest.

But overall my trip to Xi An was pretty cool and maybe I can go there again when I have time. But I would say the smog there is not very appealing and I was very happy to come back to Zhen'An with its blue sky, cleaner air and the mountains.

I have been bit lazy in updating this thing. But I will try to update it as much as I can.