More Traveling

It's been a while, folks.  My internet does not always treat me kindly, so I haven't been able to give an update for a while.  Don't worry, I'll punish it accordingly.  The little misbehaving brat...  Anyway, a lot has happened sinced the last update.  Last week, we took a trip across China, initially flying out to Xinjiang province in west China and then working our way back east by train and bus.  Xinjiang is an incredibly interesting region.  The biggest minority group there is the Uyghur people, who are Muslim and perhaps have more in common with Central Asians than with the Han Chinese.  The cities in Xinjiang that we went to, Urumqi and Turpan, were both incredibly interesting, largely due to the mix of Uyghurs and Han people.  The street food was also fantastic.  One of the things Xinjiang is known for is kebabs, and they do a fantastic job with them.  They are usually lamb, and they must be spiced with some sort of witchcraft.  There's no other way they would be so good.  There was plenty of other street food too.

Of course, being me, I also loved that signs were in both Chinese and Uyghur.  Uyghur script is based on the Arabic script, with some differences, kind of like how, say, English and French have very similar, but not identical, scripts. 



While in Turpan, we also got to see two guys giving a performance with some Uyghur musical instruments.

Also, my A&M friends will definitely appreciate this...While at the marketplace in Turpan, I found something pretty amazing.



We went to a few other places, such as Dunhuang, which is known for an extensive system of caves that was unearthed there with many murals and historical relics inside.  It also had the nicest night market I have seen in China.  At the end of the trip, we visited Xi'an, which is of course known for the Terracotta Army.  Unfortunately, my camera was once again out of commission then and I didn't get to take pictures.  You've all seen pictures of the Terracotta Army before though, so it's no big deal, eh?  Instead, I'll give you this picture from outside Dunhuang. 

Yes, I did ride one.

Since getting back to Qingdao, I've been doing an internship in my university's translation office.  Basically that means I've been correcting Chinglish.  I even got to go around and help correct public signs one day.  It's a pretty cool internship, and my boss is a really nice guy.  On Friday, he took my co-workers and me out for kebabs, and afterwards we went to karaoke.

That's about all for now.  There will be quite a bit more traveling in the next few weeks, though, so stay tuned!  We'll be right back after this commercial break!