When we travelled to adopt Kai two years ago, we complained that we didn't have time to visit Xi'an. Now we realize how lucky we were. Actually visiting Xi'an to do cultural touring before receiving your child would be great. But being stuck here during the in-province wait for the passport is grueling. There is far too much to see and do, and it feels wasteful not to take advantage of the opportunity. The problem is, that we have this brand-new member of the family, and there is a lot of very serious work we should be doing to integrate with him. This kind of work is really done best in a dimly-lit quiet room, laying in bed, long baths, singing, humming and eye-gazing. None of that for Shen! Time to get on that bus!!

Honestly though, he's holding up to it remarkably well. The guy is a little party animal. It would help if his legs functioned outside of the hotel room. Once we clear the door he stops like a mule and gives you this pouty face. "Bah" he says, holding up his arms. And since he is not going to move we have to carry him. We would have died today without the strollers.

We left the hotel at 9:00 AM to drive for an hour to see the Terra-Cotta Warriors. If you don't know what this is you can check out the Wikipedia Entry Here. It was truly amazing to see. Of course we had to stop at a Terra-Cotta Factory, this is the obligatory tourist trap/money extraction station that is always a part of these types of outings.
The museum for the Terra-Cotta Warriors was absolutely amazing, but it's huge. I mean really, really huge - and we were pushing the boys in the strollers, and it was stifling hot and humid. Kai actually was quite interested in the figures, and was a bit concerned for the ones that are still buried.




I didn't realize that all the figures were crushed and that the all the "whole" figures you see are restored from fragments.


After the museum tour we went to a buffet that featured a "noodle-show". This is basically a noodle chef who makes the long fresh noodles by hand. I don't have pictures of this because I shot video of it. The internet speed here is too slow for me to upload that right now, but it's very fun to watch - kind of like tossing pizza. After he makes the noodles he cooks them and you have them served fresh.


Kai was in heaven!


After lunch we went to a "Shadow Puppet" show. Again, I'm not going to copy a bunch of info on what this is here as you can read the Wikipedia Entry Here. We really enjoyed this. It was a little troupe that had a small space near the noodle restaurant - which was all right at the Terra-Cotta Warrior museum. We were the only ones there, so when we sat down on the little wooden benches they asked what kind of story the boys would like to see. We asked if they had a Monkey King story, and they did! So we watched The Monkey King Slay The Fire Dragon.



Also nice was that when the boys both had to go pee just as they were about to begin the show they stopped and waited for us! After the show they let us look behind the screen and see the musicians and puppeteer. They played another song for us and demonstrated how the puppets worked.



Again, I shot video of all this, but can't upload it easily right now.

After the puppet show we were allowed to return to the hotel for a short break. Tina and I were determined to have some dinner tonight. We also wanted to try to get across the street to see the Bell Tower and thought it might be fun to see it at night. So we put the boys back in the strollers and headed out to Pizza Hut again. I know! I know! Pizza Hut is lame, lame, lame! But we just didn't have the energy to try anything else. We got in there and the guy who waited on us before was there and remembered what we had ordered before - it was pretty funny. A young waitress was fascinated by us, and asked a thousand questions about what we were doing with the boys, where we were from, could they speak English, and on and on and on. Kai actually passed out before we got seated, so they gave us a booth...


Somehow, Kai managed to get his second wind, and woke up as we were paying the bill. We had saved him some pizza, so he ate it in the stroller. We then went to the grocery store we like and bought some candy for the orphanage visit tomorrow, and some milk for the boys. We dropped this stuff off at our room then pressed on to the Bell Tower. This is a picture of it at night taken from the front doorway of our hotel...


Kai was up for walking now, which was good, because the Tower is mostly stairs. We enjoyed the lights of the city night and got to watch a musical performance inside the tower. it was very fun to see it at night! Again, I shot that with video, so you don't get see it now.

It was going on 10:00 PM almost before we got the boys to bed, and shortly after that an amazing lightning storm began to rage outside. We've never seen anything like it! Constant flashes and claps of thunder all around. And the rain is just pounding down. It feels as if it is cooling things off a bit though. The lighting was striking so close that it was setting off car alarms in the parking lot below our window, but as you can see, it didn't bother the boys...