Xian

 First let me just say that I took literally THOUSANDS of pictures while we were in China and so I am really not forcing you to look at anywhere near all of our trip pictures. 

This is the city of Xian (pronounced She-an) most famous for the terracotta warriors and horses.  When we first arrived there in the afternoon, we went up to their city wall-before this trip I didn't know that they had one.  It is about 9 miles around and you can rent bikes but we did not.

 Kids looking at a model of the city wall that we were on top of

 Why should you rent bikes and ride when it is a hot afternoon and a store that sells ice cream????????

 In the plaid shirt is our tour guide who was with us in the first 3 cities-his name was Toby and he was great!  The other 3 in the picture are Ashley's new friends-the 3 teenagers in our tour group that she adopted!  They were traveling with an aunt and grandparents-2 separate families who met in the CA airport on their way to Beijing.  We were blessed with really fun and nice people to tour with.  Ashley was especially fascinated with the girls-one of whom was a ballet dancer!  Here they are all making moose antlers!

 Yes, they have them in Xian too!

 This is the city's bell tower

 our dinner restaurant that night

 Our hotel

 The next morning we went to a store, museum about the soldiers first and it was very neat!

 I was holding Ashley up in this picture below

 I could have stood and watched this lady all day long-she was making miniature statues with what looked like play-doh and we got to see her pop some out of the molds too.

 Behind the man in the blue shirt is one of the ovens where they bake the statues

 You could have a statue made with your face put on it!  No we did not!

 Above is at the store

Below are the REAL things in the pits where they were discovered in 1974-a relatively recent thing!  It was really cool and the lines of statues just go on and on and on-fascinating in the attention to detail on each one

 They had to be re-assembled after discovery which is why some are missing heads

 Below we are with the farmer who found them and yes it does say no photo-what they mean apparently is no photo without paying.

 Lunch that day

 watching the guy make noodles for soup

 More warriors in more pits

 another museum there on site

 Dumpling Dinner and the Tang Dynasty Show

 We were brought enough dumplings to have fed armies of people with everything in them from ham to shrimp to duck and pork.  There were so many varieties and each was shaped slightly differently so that you were supposed to be able to tell by looking at them what kind you were choosing.  There were so many it was hard to remember all of them but we enjoyed the meal

 We were very close to the stage and Ashley LOVED the whole performance!

 The dancers were WONDERFUL!

 The "emperor and his wife" came at the end

 Below is the Xian bell tower at night-so pretty!

 The big Wild Goose Pagoda-it leans a little so you are not allowed to go up inside anymore

 Greg took these funny pictures of the boys!

 This was really neat-the man below is a calligraphy artist and what he is holding up is Ashley's name that he wrote for her.  He did everyone's in our group and told us what all the characters meant.  Instead of our first names Greg and I had him write Elliott for us and we plan to frame them and hang them all together when we go home.

We went to another museum and in the art room Greg gave the kids the project to look around and choose their favorite painting and then we all showed each other

 Below the 4 seasons were my favorites-there were many variations of this all over the museum

 Below is a painting that we bought because we just loved the woods and mountains and water it depicted so much!

 at the entrance of this museum

 I laughed and had to take a picture of this Bread Talk store because apparently it is a chain store-we have Bread Talk in Manila.  Chengdu and the panda bears are next!