Malissa-People, food, and trains

I've had a couple of exchanges between the people here. I've mostly been repeating, "Mei guo ren." That means "American." Our tour group draws a lot of attention; our group has gotten many weird looks and even stopped for pictures by the natives. Adoption is not common here in China but is starting to be more known. Causcasians are rare around these areas and are not commonly seen. 

The food is very good. We went to a place called Bellagio and got incredible dumplings. At a lot of places we've been eating there are lazy susans to pass the interesting dishes around. We've had a lot of rice, noodles, broccoli, unknown vegetables, chicken, pork, beef, Coke, water, and last night Peking duck. It was tasty; the duck tasted like chicken. I like trying these exotic, new, authentic Chinese food. 

Last night we rode in a sleeper train from Beijing to Xi'an.  Our little room held 2 bunk beds.  We shared the room with another mother and her daughter, Jana.  It was dark outside pretty much the whole time so we did not get to see much of the countryside.  This morning we saw a little bit when the sun began to rise.  We saw a nuclear power plant and lots of fields with corn.  There was also a lot of garbage thrown in piles along the railroad tracks.