Greetings from Xi’an! I am very pleased to report that this week has been considerably more successful than last, and that I’m finally getting the hang of the language, having spent the last few days practising my haggling skills in the Muslim Quarter.

We went to Carol’s grandparents for dinner on Saturday evening and were spoilt with a wonderful array of dishes (including dumplings which I cautiously avoided) before playing Chinese checkers with her cousins, who I’m determined to beat before I leave. Carol’s enthusiasm for even the most mundane things is highly infectious and I left beaming, really excited for our travelling plans, having entirely forgotten about the rather hellish week we’d had.

We left for Xi’an at some ungodly hour last Monday morning and have spent the week visiting the sites and enjoying our first hot showers since we left Beijing almost a month ago.

The train journey out here was pretty uneventful apart from an elderly Chinese man in our carriage getting increasingly frustrated as he tried to teach Ali traditional calligraphy, although if I’m honest I couldn’t really tell the difference between what she was doing and what he was doing.

The journey back to Lanzhou tonight looks set to be more interesting though as there weren’t any beds available due to it being so close to the Spring Festival, and so we’ve had to opt for a hard seat ticket on the overnight train, which should be an experience!

Still, it’ll be nothing compared to a journalist we met who’d spent fourteen days on a train from Russia to Mongolia.

Xi’an is the ancient capital of China and marked the end of the Silk Road, a trade route which stretched over seven-thousand miles through much of Central Asia, Europe and North Africa.

This week we visited the Temple of the Eight Immortals which, as the name suggests is dedicated to a group of legendary ‘xian’ or ‘immortals’ in Chinese mythology.

Some of the murals were amazing and I’ve posted a few photos of them.

After this we stopped by the Big Goose Pagoda, to the south of the city walls which gave us great views.

On Saturday we watched a traditional musical performance at the Bell Tower, which I’ve been trying to upload a video of but to no avail, so I’ll have to play around with the format.

The performers were excellent and wore customary Chinese dress, although the sight of Ugg boots peeping out of the bottom of one girl’s dress did make me laugh.

The contradictions didn’t end there though as the Bell Tower itself is situated in the middle of a roundabout surrounded by shopping malls and fast food restaurants, with cars racing round it at dizzying speed.

We decided to save the best till last though and yesterday headed out to visit the Terracotta Army which are about an hour out of the city.

Uncovered in 1974 by some Xi’an farmers digging for water, the life-size warriors date back to 210 BC and were created to guard the tomb of Qin Shi Huang, the first Emperor of China.

I’d seen an exhibition on the warriors at the British Museum last year, but to see them all was just breathtaking.

We learnt that many of the soldiers are actually still underground as archaeologists wait for advanced techniques to excavate the figurines without damaging them.

The weather here is definitely warmer than Lanzhou, although bizarrely it’s colder inside the hostel than it is outside as the Chinese tend to keep doors and windows open, even when it’s minus temperatures outside.

We discovered this at the school too and often found ourselves teaching in coats. Other than the constant draught, the hostel is actually quite nice, and we’ve had the luxury of having a ten-bedroom dorm to ourselves all week.

There are people from all over the world staying here and I managed to find myself in a deep discussion about Obama with two Palin supporters from Iowa the other night.

Bus drivers in Xi’an are even more crazy than those in Lanzhou, something I didn’t think was humanly possible!

Surprisingly the female drivers seem to have more road rage than the men and beep their horns with frightening aggression at any pedestrians taking too long to cross.

Add to this potholes in the road every couple of hundred yards and it makes for a very interesting journey.

Luckily though we’re all packed in like sardines, faces pressed against the glass, so have other passengers to cushion us when we inevitably stumble.

I’m off to visit the Great Mosque now before we head to the train station, which is currently looking like a scene out of a disaster movie, with suitcases and people strewn all over the floor as they wait for elusive train tickets.

I’m hoping to update the blog about once a week from now on, providing I can find an internet cafe where the air won’t blacken my lungs.