Xi'an: Part I

We're back home in Xiamen after an uneventful flight -- far less eventful than our experience getting to Xi'an! I managed to take a fantastically ungraceful prat fall while walking into the Xiamen Airport. I tripped on the curb and landed face first on the sidewalk. It was such a spectacular fall that the cab driver who delivered us to the airport actually left her cab in the middle of the street to check on me! I was fine -- but I managed to split my lip with my front teeth and was bleeding like crazy. It was funny, as I was falling I realized I was going to hit my face on the sidewalk even before it happened; that whole falling-in-slow-motion thing is apparently true! Who knew?!

Anyway, I brushed myself off, checked in our luggage, and managed to secure ice for an icepack, which I found pretty amazing (finding ice, I mean)! I feel really lucky that I didn't break anything, and I still have all my teeth. And about one-third of my top lip rivals Angelina Jolie's in puffiness -- I highly recommend collagen injections over my method!

Other than that, getting to Xi'an was a breeze. We checked into our hotel, ate dinner at the hotel's buffet (pronounced by all the hostesses as boo-fey!), and had an early night. The next morning, our friends arrived by the night train from Beijing. That's Maggie and Meredith with Zoe and Maya in the picture above. My girls were really tickled to meet up with their friends from America.

Sue, Maggie & Meredith are on an OCDF tour, like the mini-tour we did with OCDF in June to Guangxi Province. Their tour includes Beijing, Xi'an & Guilin, and then they'll be visiting Meredith's and Maggie's hometowns. We arranged with the OCDF tour guide to join the group for the Xi'an portion of the trip.

We were to meet the group at 11 a.m. for the first outing, and as we walked to the lobby I saw someone who looked familiar. But it couldn't be, could it? I couldn't just run into someone else from the States in China, could I?! Sure enough, the OCDF tour included ANOTHER family I knew! I actually went to college with Melissa. We lost track of each other after I graduated from Rice, but we reestablished contact when she and her husband, Chris, were waiting to adopt Joie from China. They even came to the airport to meet Zoe when she first came home from China! Melissa was just as surprised to see me as I was to see her, and I hope she was just as delighted as I was to see another friendly face in China.

More about our Xi'an adventures in the next exciting installment of "All Roads Lead to China," same Bat-time, same Bat-station . . . .