Shanghai Was Ding Ding Hao

Your Chinese phrase for the day is "ding ding hao."  It means very, very good, and that's just what Shanghai was, very, very good. Today we bid a fond farewell to Shanghai.  We had to get up at 4:30 a.m. in order to make it to the airport on time, and our journey included a special 
treat - a ride on the Maglev train!

Maglev stands for magnetic levitation.  We were told that this train doesn't actually touch the track but hovers about a half centimeter above it.  We were also told that it is the fastest train in the world.  We traveled the 33 kilometers to the airport in under seven minutes and the train wasn't even close to traveling at top speed.  Totally cool.

We had a two-hour flight to Xi'an.  Our China national guide, David, accompanied us and will stay with us the entire time we are in China.  Sadly, we had to leave our awesome Shanghai city guide and our wonderful driver behind. Pictured below from left to right are Alan, our Shanghai city guide (and no, he's not a giant.  He's standing two steps above everyone else), then there's David, our China national guide, and then there's our driver.  None of us could understand his Chinese name, but he was an awesome driver.  We wish he and Alan could have come with us all the way to Beijing.

Once we arrived in Xi'an, we met up with our Xi'an city guide, Susan.  She's adorable and very sweet.  I'll upload a picture of her in the next day or two so you all can see her.  Susan took us all to a place called the Big Wild Goose Pagoda, and then on to see the 600-year-old city wall, the best preserved city wall in all of China.  We happened to arrive just as something that looked very much like a changing of the guard was happening, which was interesting to see. 

Tomorrow we're off to see the terra cotta warriors.  We're all super excited to see them.  Jill is so excited that she's already getting in touch with her inner warrior.