Our Arrival and First Days in Xi'an, China

Jocelyn Writes:

Hello Everyone!! We have finally overcome our jet lag enough to begin our blog. Our arrival coincides with Spring Festival here in China. Spring Festival is a time to return to your village of origin and visit your family. The Gao Xin School has been pretty empty this week--students are on vacation. The sound of firecrackers can be heard at all times of the day and fireworks are all over the skies at night. Ayden and Gavi have written descriptions of where we are and what we've been doing...these descriptions appear below.


Ayden Writes:

We are staying at the Gao Xin Number 1 School on the senior campus. I am sharing a room with my brother and my sister. We have a little kitchen with a clean water cooler because the water in China is dirty and you can’t drink out of the faucet. We have a bathroom with a shower the bathroom smells really bad. We have a TV but it is of no use because it is all in Chinese. My parents’ room is right next to my room.

Yesterday my mom, my tutor, my sister and I went to the old city of Xi’an where we walked on the walls. When we got there my mom paid 40 Yuan per person so we could climb on the wall. The exchange rate is 7.3 Yuan per dollar. When we got there I saw a big stage covered with Chinese new year decoration including a big rat because it is the year of the rat.

To get on the wall you had to climb a big stare case. When we got on the wall we started walking. While we were walking, I saw lots of decorations for the Chinese new year. The wall that we walked on was built in the 14th century during the Ming dynasty.

Zaijen! (see you later!!) Ayden

Gavi Writes:

Hey all!

WOW we are finally here! Thirteen hours on a plane is much too long! I can only think of two times when the dazed miserable expressions left our faces, first, watching the sunrise over the North Pole, and second, when the pilot announced that we were approaching our destination, and even then Emily and I exchanged an anxious glance as we prepared for the nauseating landing to come. However, this has all become worth it now that we are here and settled for the most part. China is everything and more then I ever could have expected or prepared myself for! My family and I are staying in dorms at the Gao Xin Number 1 High School in Xi’an. We are served three meals a day in the special section of the cafeteria reserved for guests. The food is absolutely amazing and we are given three times the amount we can eat! The rooms we are staying in are much nicer then I expected. Though much smaller then I am used to, they are comfortable and there is all of Xi’an to explore when they get tight!

I think the best word to describe Xi’an is different. For one thing (in my mothers words) it has the feel of a science fiction movie, where it’s always nuclear winter and the sun is slowly burning out. We haven’t seen a blue sky since we left Brookline and from what I have heard it’s not likely that we will until we return. However even the constant grey isn’t the biggest change. I think that the strangest and hardest thing to get used to is being an extreme minority. I feel as if I’m some strange imported animal newly added to the zoo! From shopping at the supermarket where my family and I were stared at by many, and straight out followed by some, to the day before yesterday when we were at the Dai Yen Ta (the Big Goose Pagoda). A mother, instead of taking a picture of her daughter with the nearly 3,000-year-old, seven-story building, asked to take a picture of her daughter with me! I think that feeling like animals in a zoo is something we are just going to have to get used to.

Along with the Big Goose Pagoda, the translator/ Chinese tutor my family has hired to help us out for the next four months, has taken us to LOTUS (the local supermarket), and the old city wall, which we walked around and then shopped in the market below it. All of these places were incredibly interesting (including the supermarket) and I can’t wait to see more of the amazing city that is Xi’an!

More later,
Gavi