Last full day in Xi’An

 I had the most amazing day.  We started the day with a trip to the Pangliu village and elementary school.  This is a rural area outside Xi’An and childhood home of our tour guide, Richard Wang.  The people of the village are brick makers and work very hard and very long hours to produce many bricks.  Hopefully you can see their work in my pictures.  The villagers are also growers of many types of vegetables and use homemade green houses to extend the growing season.  We also visited the village school and had a grand welcome from the 4^th & 5^th grade classes.  They held a little parade for us and then greeted us in their classroom.  I was able to give each student a pencil and a piece of chocolate and I also gave about 10 of the students a Norwell t-shirt.  I first had them count to ten in English for me.  Everyone of them could do it!!  This village, like many others, has their own language so students are actually being equipped with three languages.  I was also able to give the village leader and the principal a Norwell t-shirt.  The village has a little over 2000 people and the school has about 120 students in grades 1-6.  At lunch, our group split into three groups of 7-8 and went to the home of one of the villagers.  I can truly say that I have had an authentic Chinese meal.  The main part of the meal was noodles and bread.  This is because this area of China has wheat as it’s main crop.  The bottom line for this portion of the day was that it reminded me of how truly thankful I have to be for how good we have it in the United States.  After leaving the village, we made a stop at a jade factory.  We got to learn about jades, which is a stone for which China is known.  And yes, I did buy Amber a pair of ear rings there.  We then went back to the hotel which was on the edge of the Muslim district.  There are about 30 million Chinese Muslims.  We took a visit to the mosque and got to watch their prayer session from afar.  I was then off to dinner in the Muslim district.  Like a broken record, the food was awesome!!!  We got a chance to take in some of the Xi’An night life.  It is amazing just how much the Chinese are trying to be like Americans in that respect.  During the evening, I got a chance to meet two policemen from Guangdong who were in their first night of a 7 day vacation in Xian.  Unfortunately, one of them had his money stolen from him while he was there.  I don’t know how his fortunes turned out, but he wasn’t having fun when we had to leave.