Day 7

August 27, 2010 - Xi'an, Shaanxi Provence, China

Today, in a number of ways, was a repeat of the rest of my week, only sped up. I went to the airport with Xiao Liu to pick up Jordan. Then, I helped Jordan check in and get registered. The day was concluded with a trip to the market on Chang An Nan.

On the ride to the airport, we passed a few cars that Xiao Liu indicated were bound for a wedding. The first...


The Flower Car. The car had flowers taped to it.

...was covered in flowers. Well, not covered, which is maybe weirder. But, it had some flowers taped right to it. ((shrugs)) The second was maybe stranger:


The Rocket Car. Hmm...I have no idea.

I guess a car equipped with rocket launchers is a standard wedding item, but I'll have to defer to my married friends just to be sure.

After we arrived back at the hotel, Jordan and I decided that lunch was necessary. "我想吃饺子！"("I want to eat dumplings!"), I said, and Jordan agreed. We walked down Shi Da and looked in the various restaurants. I tried to read the signs, not always succeeding, but I recognized the word for dumpling and knew we'd found what we were looking for.


Dumplings (饺子). Mmm...dumplings.

We place our order: I ordered one that said it contained meat, but neither of us were sure what kind of meat it meant; it said "大肉" ("Big Meat"), whatever that means. Jordan's order was for chicken, we thought. Maybe. They brought us both a plate. The dumplings looked delicious and we started to eat. Then, they brought us both ANOTHER plate.


More dumplings. More mmmm?

Somewhere along the line, there was confusion in our ordering process. Oh, well. More dumplings it is! They were quite good, but we ended up taking most of them back to the hotel. Later, Jordan and I would both discover that our stomachs didn't like the dumplings much, and we had to throw the rest of them away. It was the first time I'd gotten sick since I arrived last week.

After I helped him register, we took a walk around our neighborhood.



Our Neighborhood. Some of the apartments near our hotel.

There was also a wall around a kindergarten that featured a lot of fun, weird painted characters:






Fun Characters. Hey! Cookie Monster!

This reminded me of some other fun pictures I took this week. Which brings me to my first Friday Favorite. Every Friday, I plan to talk about one thing that was my favorite thing in China that week. This week, its cute characters. Practically everything here has an adorable little mascot on it, and I just love them. So, here are some of the pictures I took of them this week:






More Fun Characters. Haibao, the Shanghai Expo Mascot; the couple that are the mascots for Haier Air Conditioners; Lemonhead; the things from the Dico's box; and, well, the Jissbon Condom Man. lol.

Friday Favorite Bonus: And just for fun, some more Chinglish!


Huh? It's for soy milk, of course.

Hayden