Day 51: I Must Look Old

My Dad has a joke.

It’s not a good joke, but he always laughs. Sometimes I realize how much I’m like him when I laugh at my own jokes. I’m also the 23 year old guy who tells Dad jokes.

But the joke says that people think you’re (me) older until you open your mouth. I just laugh, it started early on when I was that age between growing up, but still sounding like a kid. Sometimes I’m not sure if I ever left that stage.

The makes sense because I played “uncle” to a group of Belgium girls who thought I was 26 years old or older. They were 21, but still. I helped them along, as I met them on the bus to the Terra Cotta Warriors and became their guide of sorts. I’m not sure how things like that always seem to happen to me, but they do.

The two Chloe’s and a Daphne (also two of them were twins) and I ventured to see the Terra Cotta Warriors or Bing Ma Yong as I kept on continually hearing while we were inside the gates of the Terra Cotta Pits.

We finished off the day running into a few people that somehow we had known in common throughout our 1 day in Xi’an and I listened to them speak French for about 30 minutes. Such a pretty language. It was a long day traveling an hour out to the Warriors and 3-4 hours there, and then an hour back. I was thoroughly tired. So I came back to the hostel rested a bit and then went out to see the city once more at night.

Xi’an was terribly hot during the day, but at night it was a cool summer in Xi’an and the Xi’anese seemed to wake up once the sun went down. I walked around on the area that is known as the Muslim Quarter of Xi’an where they were serving some very good lamb. I forgot about how much I like spicy Chinese food. Living in Qingdao has made me used to bland Chinese food. People closer to the south know how to cook.

After coming around to 11 pm I decided to crash. My new Belgium friends invited me to go out dancing with them that night, but I was so tired that dancing would’ve probably killed me. I can see why they thought I was old. Maybe I am becoming an old man. I remember when my body and mind would wake up around 11 pm.

Maybe my Dad’s joke is funnier, and truer than I know.

~

Mostly pictures of the Terra Cotta Warriors. They were probably the coolest thing I’ve seen in a long time. They called it the 8th wonder of the world, but I think I’ve heard everything called the 8th wonder of the world at one point or another. Except me, I don’t get called that, just old.

-NL