back from china and so very depressed. i call it post-china depression, pcd. same ol same ol' saaa issues. went to beijing for a few days, then xi an for two days, climbed hua mountain, and saw the terra cotta warriors. when we climbed the mountain, saw a couple workers carrying loads up the mountain. talked to them and found out they were getting paid 30 yen a load, four dollars a day, as it takes about eight hours to make one trip. us tourists, on the other hand, paid 200 yen (about twenty four dollars) to get in the freakin park and take the cable cars half way up the mountain. ridiculous. beautiful mountain, though. next day went to a couple museums and chinese historical sights. learned some chinese history. china's got so much i always wondered how chinese kids learned it. american history is only two hundred years, fits nicely into a giant textbook...terra cotta warriors were pretty impressive. amazing how much work went into qin shi huang's tomb. at one point, there were 70,000 people working on it, they started building when he was thirteen, and took them over twnety years to complete. he's got a freakin underground city as a tomb. that's got to take a monstrous ego...took the train there and back, bout thirteen hour ride overnight slept in triple bunks, interesting...saw caves dug into the mountains in the countryside. what a harsh life, farmers up at four am working, mom had to live in one once, went on and one about how terrible it was, figured she was just guilt-trippin me. i spose people living such lives don't know anything better, so it must not be that bad for them.
got my hair permed. they did a crappy job, but what can you expect from ten dollars and a whole in the wall. i don't really care, either. mom says i look like a witch or a bum. oh well, i wanted a change and i got it. :)
still was much staring in china. people asked where i was from, why i was so tall, etc. got used to it sorta.

glad to be back where i can see blue sky and breathe fresh air. beijing and xian are so damn polluted, they rarely ever see the sky. how depressing. couldn't live like that. not to mention the toilets...miss the busy-ness of china though. getting used to being a freak, from being stared at wherever i go, china, america...eh.