"Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream!" What does "life is but a dream" mean?

Just because the summer camp is over in Ping Liang, does not mean I will not be in a classroom for the next month....

Friday was the last day of the summer program in Ping Liang, (at midnight we boarded a night bus to Xian) and Monday morning I was invited to visit a class at Xian's Language University for middle school students taking an oral English class with my new friend Lucy. After introducing myself and having all the students ask me questions... questions about how I like China, what America is like, about my family, what I want in a boyfriend, how I feel about the war in Iraq, etc. ... I taught them the English song, "Row, row, row your boat" and the great English game "Simon Says"! Fun was had by all. I returned the next day to visit a second class.

Now I must back up a bit and tell you about our trip to Xian.... first I must say that the distance from PingLiang to Xian is only about 200 miles, which on the wonderful I5, we are used to in Oregon, should only take about 3 hours, right? Not so in China... We were planned to leave at 11:00 Friday night on an overnight/"sleeper" bus. As we were all standing out on the street ready to go with all of our language 11:00 past and no bus... 11:15 past and we find out that the main road between Ping Liang and Xian is blocked.... don't worry there is another rout, but still the bus hasn't arrived. 12:00 finally the bus arrives. We all board after the longest send off/farewell ever in history, to settling down in our narrow bunk beds and dozens of students still standing outside waving their final good byes. (I'll just say here, I'm glad I didn't really have to say good bye, since I'll be back in just a few short weeks.) That's not to say there weren't many tears from many others.

It took awhile just to get out of town, seemed the driver didn't know the way very well. (Though I'm sure he did, sometimes they just seem to have their own agenda.) But we were on our way... Nothing really major happened, it's just the whole experience... bumpy roads, waking up sometime in the middle to someone banging on the window, horns honking, seeming to be going very fast over and around the curvy hills and so on (as many of our students would say). Didn't get much sleep to say the least. Tried, but every time we went over a speed bump, we all bounced out of our beds about 5 inches in the back of the bus. Did see some pretty neat scenery peaking out the window every hour or so though... at one point we were driving right next to a bunch of caves in the side of the rock hill side. And early in the morning we drove through some villages that were just waking up. As we entered into the outskirts of Xian, it seems many people sleep outside on cots or beds right outside their shops.

Finally we arrived at about 9:00. We stopped and changed busses at a hotel and then had a KFC "American breakfast" on our way out to see the Terra Cotta Warriors. They were pretty neat to see, but not necessary to see many times. From there we skipped lunch and went to a Muslim market to do a little bit of shopping.

It is much hotter in Xian than it was in Ping Liang. I didn't realize how nice it had been until we got out of the bus.

Now I am here waiting for a friend to come from Beijing. We will go to her hometown together to visit her family and then go back to Beijing together after maybe one week of traveling.

In Xian I'm staying with a Chinese girl, Lucy, in her apartment. She is an English Teacher at the Language University. She is very nice and we get along well together!