we reached xian last night in the rain that has been virtually non-stop since we arrived in china.

the rain combined with the muggyness of most days means that out view of mcuh of the amazing scenery has been impaired but we have only camped once (a plus in my book).
queenie's bags are smaller than ours so it has not been difficult to pack all her stuff.
so far queenie has been lovely and is getting used to the old man's ways and is even cracking some great jokes of her own. however, she does appear a bit nervous and amuses us greatly when she pops out if the car to check the directions every 5 minutes.

greg, alex, frances and animals will be especially pleased to know that we ourselves are planning what animals to get when we are back in england. i was most disappointed when daddy wne tback on his word that he would get me a cat and tells me that i am only allowed to have a turtle as it will be really easy to keep when i am at university. great.
all this animal discusion has been going on while we have been on the hunt for dog and donkey restaurants that we have seen occasionly.

a few days ago we managed to secure our first big of donkey whihc was extremely tender but 'was covered in too much sauce', said daddy who is most pleased to have something new to complain about.
on our first night in china we also managed to grab two delecicies in one fell swoop- sparrow and silkworm. the former tastey if a bit cruncy (it was the whole of the scrawny bird on one stick), and the latter foul. silk worm, although crossed off out list is not something we would recomend to anyone.
we are now on the search for dog (which queenie doesn't eat) and as you can imagine the existance of hundereds of stray dogs in china has caused many jokes and much helarity amongst the camp.

i am currently typing to you from a guesthouse which is a little to trendy for us.
i think you will get the picture when i tell you that there was someone beatboxing live int eh bar in the basement last night.
have been by myself all day as the other have finally decided that the terracotta army was something not to be missed (though tessie insisted it was). as i have seen them before i have been exploring the city by myself for most of the day; i have had quite the adventure.
everyone who i have tried to speak to in chinese, through the aid of my trusty phrase book, has promtly gone of in search of someone who speaks english to translate. this in turn has made be somewhat conspicious. the first restaurant and bank i went to lead me to another where the people spoke english. this has been most disressing.

a couple of nights ago we stayed in a smaller chinese city. we arrived in the late evening and were fortunate enough to stumble accross the ancient part of town where we found some men playing chequers who lead us to a guesthouse tucked in a side street. the family we stayed with was lovely and the room the best an cleaneset so far: there was even a real toilet (as a pose to the squat ones that are the toilets of choice in china). the floor was stone and the bed was built in from stone and took us one half of the room.
that night we were in more the china that we had wanted and as usual took countless photographs.
will try to load some photographs today but this may not be possible as i need to charge my lap top but we don't have an adaptor and the invertor in the car thtat we ahve been using got burnt out.
i was nowhere near the scene of the crime.

since being in china we ahve ben on proper roads for the majority of the time as we have been travelling on the expressway despite the best efforts of the officials at the toll boothes on every entrance and exit to them. every offical has appeared to take umbridge with larry and the the number of fights we have had have been countless.
the charge of the toll varies with distance and we are given a card when we get on the motorway that we give back when we get off. when our distances and charges have been calculated that the further you go the cheaper it works out to be. it is still bloody expensive though.

seeing as we are back on the tarmaced roads we have tried to repair wilma and larry as best we can. we even went to a proper citroen garage in the last big town and, luxery of luxeries, we fixed the severed handbrake cable. when at the garage we acted as great entertainment for all the stuff who crowed roudn the car as though we were mao himself and took lots of photographs.

we are glad that this blog in not pointless and that people actually read it and promise to do our best to upload more photographs that will not get us arrested as queenie has told us some of them will.

we would like to wish freddie a happy birthday. we wish we could send you some caviar and russia's finest. if only we were there.

granny, say hello to kim, jean and abby for us.
we hope poppet gets better. show her the blog. am sure it would help.

chinese food is not yet making us sick although noodles in the morning is no loger novel, as it should be. hoever, we are missing good old fashioned granny-style jam and pickles. i am sure she is saving us some. also, i hope this plug for granny's jam is not going unnoticed.

lewis is looking forward to hearing from the new p1 and was most excited to hear from mrs de jager.

the rest of us are just excited to hear from anyone at all.
every comment is read and apprecited.