Classes are over, grades turned in, we celebrated the 4th of July and now we are on the road traveling. It is sad to leave our students for the summer, but we are excited to see more parts of China. We have made it past the large travel portion of our trip--51 hours of trains and many hours of buses also. We traveled from Anshun to spend time with friends for the 4th--no fireworks as it is not celebrated much here in China. We then traveled 27 hours to Xian in sleeper car--very nice and we met lots of nice people. When we arrived a friend of a friend met us and put us up at a hotel as it was 11:30pm. We did not know that the next two days would be planned by him. unfortunately, we did not get to go to the famous terracotta soldiers, but did get to see some other famous historical sites before having to go t Baoji to meet our train--there were no seats on any other train. We did not get tickets for seats there either but were able to find some seats, but no sleeper car for over 24 hours in a hard seat with lots of people stuffed in. We met some nice people but were not always able to communicate. The area up is very beautiful with lots of interesting houses, lots of mountains, and varying farming practices. We are now in Hohhot in Inner Mongolia and will spend a week or so in this area before traveling up to Mongolia. One interesting thing that happens at the border of China and Mongolia is that they stop and change the wheels on the train because they are afraid that China will invade. We will go to Beijing on the 1st of August and then to Yunnan. We are thankful for your thoughts and we hope you are doing well. We will hope to update more in the coming days. Love you all tons and hope to hear from you.