A few weekends ago Ryan and I celebrated being in Asia together for 1 year. This past year has really solidified the meaning to me of, "Time goes by fast when you're having fun." We've been to 6 different countries, had hundreds of stamps added into our passport (mostly Ryan with at least 4 a week from China) and added one small dog to our family. This past year has been life changing to say the least.
Oddly enough, over our 1 year anniversary weekend, we were traveling to Xian, China. Ryan was there during the week to do recruiting at some local universities so we decided to meet up and travel over the weekend. Luckily for us we were joined with some of Ryan's co-workers who were amazing tour guides and translators for us throughout our trip.
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| Ryan ready to recruit some more engineers! |
Our first stop was to visit the Terracotta Army. The Terracotta Army was built for Emperor Qin as a protective army for his afterlife. Building began in 246 BC and took 700,000 workers to complete over the Emperor's lifetime. It wasn't until a farmer was trying to dig a well in 1974 that the Army would later be discovered. Only a small fraction of the tombs are currently open and the majority of the army still remains buried.
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| The farmer who discovered the Terracotta Army |
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| The largest tomb uncovered so far |
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| Portions of the tomb currently being excavated |
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| Partial warriors being currently placed together |
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| In front of Qin's main tomb which has yet to be touched |
The next day after a trip to the Xian History Museum, we headed over to the Xian City Wall. The wall is a 14 km square that centers around the heart of Xian. It was used to protect the citizens from attack when Xian was the capitol of China.
The popular thing to do is rent bicycles and ride the entire loop of the wall. Ryan talked me into a tandem bike saying, 'When are we ever going to get to ride a tandem bike again?' Well...I think we are happy we took our opportunity and not eagerly search out another one again. It took us a bit but we managed to get the hang of the bike and enjoy a nice little ridge on a 2,000 year old wall.
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| The beginning of our trip- all smiles |
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| Once we got the hang of it we moved onto take selfies |
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| The wall at night |
That night we were able to slip away for dinner and some light-seeing on our own. Some things you just have to see twice- once in the day and once at night. Plus, Ryan promised me there was a Dairy Queen nearby and I can never pass up a chance to get a Blizzard, espcially since Hong Kong doesn't have one yet!
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| The ceiling of the mall was a large screen that played a video of changing seasons |
Ryan and I have had an amazing year living in Hong Kong and we can't wait to see what the next year brings! We can't thank everyone enough for their wonderful support and love that we feel from the other side of the world- if it weren't for that it would be a lot more difficult to live so far away; thank you.
- Kirby
