I've been everywhere man

So finally we are traveling. Our first stop was a city called Xi'an. But to get there we had a 36 hour train ride. There are four classes of train in China. Hard seat, soft seat, hard sleeper, and soft sleeper. We were riding hard sleeper. Which is slightly nicer than it sounds, but not nice enough to be comfortable. There are six beds in a compartment, stacked three beds high. When you are on the top bunk (which I was), you are really high up. The beds were narrow, but long enough so that our feet weren't hanging off like they were on the sleeper buses. We boarded the train in the evening at around six, and we arrived two days later at four in the morning. The first night was filled with guitar playing, until I broke a string. Some of us watched a movie on the portable dvd player we pitched in on. Lots of people read, but most of the time was just spent sitting around, talking, laughing, listening to music, and trying to make the time go faster. Once we got to Xi'an, however, we were rewarded for our troubles. We saw the Terra Cotta warriors, an exhibition of Xi'an drumming, went to an awesome mosque, bought all sorts of cool schwag, and climbed to the top of a giant pagoda. The weather is beautiful, and we sported shorts and sipped caramel frappuccinos (thank you starbucks!) as we strolled around in the parks and streets we visited. We have been eating a lot of street food, and it is mucho delicious. After Xi'an we boarded a 15 hour train, which felt like nothing, and arrived in Chengdu, the biggest city other than Beijing that we will see, and the capital of the province Sichuan. So far it has been amazing. The street food is notoriously spicy in Sichuan, and last night we had our first mouth burning experience with that. The hostel here is gorgeous, and today we are going to the Tibetan quarter for our first taste of Tibetan culture (and food). We will be here for a while now, so hopefully I will be more regular with my updates. And there are a bunch of new yaks if you want more info!