First of all, I was ready to go to bed around midnight, and right as I was about to fall asleep, a porter comes in, shines a flashlight in my eyes are starts asking me questions. I wasn’t sure what he was saying at first considering I was half conscious and also because he was speaking in Chinese. At first, I thought he was asking for my water bottle, but then I realized he was asking for my train ticket. I gave it to him in a daze and tried to go back to sleep, but less than a minute later, he comes back and re-shines the light in my face, and hands me a card. I’m still not sure what the purpose of this was—it happened to everyone else earlier—but I did not appreciate the light to the face in pure darkness.
I set an alarm to wake me up at 8:30, but I woke up naturally at 7:00 with severe leg cramps. Logan and Korey later informed me that I am either lacking potassium or severely dehydrated. It’s probably the later because I don’t actually drink enough water. All I know is that my leg was hurting for a solid 30 seconds and walking on it afterward hurt ever so slightly.
I got ready and then made my way over to Hannah and Korey’s bunk. I chatted with Korey and Holden for a bit and then watched Korey place Fire Emblem on his phone. We then switched to Fates. Of course, Korey put the game on classic hard mode, which was different considering I always play on normal casual. Also, I got to see male Corrin, and I forgot that you don’t get Jakob when you do that. Basically, what I’m saying is Felicia sucks and permadeath stresses me out.
Korey handed me off the DS on the third battle, which I actually managed to successfully beat after my first try. Maybe I should start playing on hard, classic because the game felt totally different. First of all, I forgot it was on hard, so my strategy had to be different. Second of all, I couldn’t use characters as bait because they were just going to respond in the next battle. It really threw me for a loop on chapter five. It took Hannah, Korey, and I a collective 7ish turns to finally beat it.
Our train arrived at 12:00, and we didn’t make it back to school until around 12:30ish. Hannah, Rachel, Cayleigh, Kevin, and I went to get food at the Muslim 餐厅 and I had some bomb ass noodles. We also realized how hot and humid Xi’an is, and came to the startling conclusion that the weather in the desert is better than the weather here.
After lunch, we went to go shower and rest for an hour. Logan, Hannah, Korey, Faith, Cayleigh, and decided to go to a mall. I’m not sure what we were on the hunt for, but I think it was clothes. We ended up walking into a boujie ass mall. We spent maybe a total of 2 minutes on each floor and only stopped to get drinks. I got some cookie drink that wasn’t that good. I wasn’t really a fan of the soggy cookies floating around in there.
Also, we had Korey read us the menu, and for the record, I recognized the character 苏 and he did not, so this is a level up for my self-esteem. I think he said that he thought the character was li, but I muttered “it’s that 苏州’s 苏” but I didn’t say it very loud because I was afraid of being wrong. Turns out I wasn’t.
Bragging aside, we got our drinks and left the mall. We walked towards the 大雁塔 and just walked around. Hannah and Faith bought some fans, and we all suffered in the heat. We found a stacked turtle statue, and Logan wanted to recreate it. Originally, we were going to go Logan, Korey, me, but I couldn’t figure out how I was supposed to get onto of Korey’s back. Hannah tried to spot me, but we ended up falling, so instead, we made a pyramid. Not a perfect recreation, but a good one none the less.
We found another mall area and Cayleigh bought a cute shirt.
Since we had seen all there was, we started to walk back to campus, but someone mentioned a clothing market and buy Supreme shirts, and I decided I wanted in on that since I was a stick in the mud and didn’t buy one last year. It was hot and nearing dinner, so Faith and Cayleigh decided to go back to campus and Hannah, Korey, Logan, and I decided to go to the clothing market.
We ended up finding a lot of Pepa Pig shirts (none of us can agree why she’s so popular in China. The theories are she represents good luck or she’s a symbol of independence because she does what she wants.)
There weren’t any good Supreme shirts, but Logan ended up buying a yellow Supreme hat. It’s kind of great.
Looking for an escape from the heat (aka 空调), we headed to an underground clothes market. On the way over, we saw what appeared to be a dance competition. We waited for 10ish minutes only to see 30 seconds of pretty good dancing.
The underground clothing market was great because I finally wasn’t sweating. I bought a water and the cashier asked me where I was from. She didn’t believe me when I said America, and then said I look too Chinese. I told her that I was born in China, but grew up in America, and again she didn’t really understand. I was going to continue explaining, but then a woman with a hot dog interrupted me.
We didn’t find any clothes in the underground place either, but we did see some interesting mannequins.
We took the subway back to school because it was hot and we didn’t feel like walking. It was so crowded because we were right at rush hour. I was genuinely afraid the metro doors were just going to close on us because we were barely in the car. Like literally, we were pressed as physically close as possible to each other.
Dinner was great because we ate at the place we had dinner after we came back from Chengdu. Hannah and I split a plate of 土地牛肉米饭. We also learned that Korey’s one weakness is brain freezes since he and Logan got mango smoothies.
We probably didn’t get back to our rooms until 8 or 9, and I still hadn’t studied for the 听写. Hannah came to my room to get lotion, but we ended up talking about the report we have to give Friday instead. She told me she was nervous about being the lowest level speaker in her group, but I told her not to worry. I guess it’s different for me since I actually enjoy public speaking. Idk, I wish I was in her group, but I won’t complain about being in a group with a level 600 and 401 person.