The Adventures of Sarah and Lexi

So much has happened since my last update, that I am not even sure where to start. I was in Beijing until the 1st, when I said goodbye to Yan and his family, and spent one final night in a really cool hostel right near Tian'an men Square. The next day I went to get my wonderful friend Sarah, who magically appeared at the Beijing airport on the 2nd. Every since, we have been taking on China together, and thoroughly enjoying ourselves. It is really fun for me to see everything again through Sarah's eyes and to think about how far I've come in terms of the things that she thinks are really weird, and must have been really weird for me in the beginning too, but are now so normal. She is constantly asking why, questioning the logic behind the bus, train, taxi, subway, hostel systems...and generally my response is just, "well that's the way it is." So far we have traipsed our way through my hometown of Hangzhou, visiting my favorite teahouse and jazz bar one last time, roaming around West Lake, hanging out with my good friend Peipei, and of course eating the amazing and cheap food at the back gate of my school. Then we were in Shanghai for a few rainy days, where the highlights included the enormous Shanghai Museum, friendly tea shop people, buying beautiful art that was either done by Beijing art students or really skillful con-artists, ascending to the 88th floor of the tallest building in China, and eating a lot of delicious food. Then we got on a 20 hour train to Xian. We had bought the cushy-est beds, which made our 20 hours very enjoyable. Our compartment-mate was very nice and helped me to acclimate to the Xian way of speaking Chinese, as he was returning home to Xian to celebrate the Chinese New Year with his family. So far I really like the feel of Xian. The buildings are smaller and the roads are narrower, and their are a lot of people. We are staying in a hostel right in the downtown area, and we are close to the Muslim area, where all of the good food is. After Xian, we will head down to Chengdu for a couple of days, and then back up to Beijing. Everything has been going really well, despite a few inevitable travel snags that are the result of traveling in general, aggravated slightly by the impending Chinese new year, when everyone travels home.
We have also been complimented on our noses a lot. People in China seem to think that we have perfectly sized noses. An old lady on a bus told us this, and several other random passerbyers. Also, people generally think we are either Russian, from the eastern part of China called Xinjiang, Middle Eastern, or basically anything but American. An old man today was so vehemently sure that we were not Americans that he asked for some identification. We declined pulling out our passport in a crowded train station, but it was pretty funny anyway.