The First Field Trip: Xi1An1 - Introduction

  Xi'an, China
Saturday, February 21, 2009

CIEE schedules field trips frequently. The first one was a weekend trip to Xi1An1. Xi1 means "west" and An1 means "peaceful". Part of the point of this trip was an orientation about travel in China, so we took an overnight train to Xi1An1 and we flew back. This trip was packed with so many things, that I am going break the entries up by event. In this entry, I will talk about the train and the hotel, in the second one I will talk about the Wild Goose Pagoda, in the third entry I will talk about lunch, in the fourth entry I will talk about the terracotta warriors, and in the last entry, I will talk about the Great Mosque and the trip back.

For many people in our group, this was the first time they had ever taken a train in China. Some had taken a train before, but not an overnight train. For me, it was the second time. One of the things that I hadn't realized before was that the train only stops in the station for 4 minutes. I had run to get on the train before, but hadn't thought about how much time I actually had. The first time I got on the train, I had a suitcase, a duffel, a backpack and my purse. It was a lot to carry, and really heavy, but a nice woman helped me lug everything at a half run onto the train. This time, I only had my backpack and purse, so I had no problems getting on and off the train. We had had hard sleepers on this trip, as opposed to the soft sleepers that we had last time. I discovered that "soft" is a misnomer, since the soft sleepers are just as hard as the hard sleepers, both of them giving one the feeling that

Hard Sleepers 1

someone had used a pair of blankets to pad a board. Not comforters, but blankets. I have gotten rather used to it, since I have not found any beds here that have anything even vaguely resembling an American mattress. Each train car had compartments that were open on the hallway side, and each compartment had six beds, three on each side. It was really fun traveling with a big group, because after the ladies came around to check our tickets, we were free to wander around.

Hard Sleepers 2

The not fun part was that we had to get up and get off the train at 5am. A tourguide met us at the station, and took us to our hotel to drop off our things. Then it was onto the tour bus and off to see the Big Wild Goose Pagoda.