When I was 7 or 10 or something my parents threw me a space themed birthday party

We arrived in Kabul Around 11 am. The night before we were in Urumuqi, China. Urumuqi had some the best food I have ever eaten. Maybe best food in the whole world! Almost on par with Kosovo. Delcious Bread and Meat! It actually reminded me of Kosova a bit as it was kind of run down. It was a bit sad though as it also had that whole atmosphere of race-invasion-occupation tensions between the Han Chinese (what you think of when you think of Chinese people) and the Uhyger Chinese (the central asian natives of the area, who the Chinese conquered way back when). The Uhgyer people live in the poorer sections of town, and tend to have the worse jobs, although the whole place wasn’t doing so hot. One interesting twist however is that a lot of the Uhyger people looked kind of white so it was different to see them being the persecuted minority for a change.

Before that Beijingwas also pretty interesting. They have the most ugly, beautiful dogs in the whole world. I spent most of my several days there laughing in different dogs ugle faces! We stayed in a hostel which was pretty okay although it was my first contact with so many english speaking foreigners in a while. The whole place seemed to be filled with matt rickes if you know who that is. That's not a bad thing, just a statement. We also popped over to Tiananmen square and looked around. Also went to this palace called the summer palace. It wasn’t too bad, although it was a little ugly in winter. Guess that’s why its called the summer palace. Tianamen square was huge and impressive and daunting, however. We couldn’t go in the forbidden city though because it was closed for repairs. Guess that’s why its forbidden (oh oh!!!)

As for the much advertised and bragged about 2 day train ride from Beijing to urumuqi, it didn’t happen. The train was already full so we couldn’t get a ticket. So we had to fly. This was okay though because then we got to stay in Beijing for an extra two days and see more stuff, plus there was this Malaysian girl in our hostel room who had just come from Moscow on the trans-siberian express (7 days non stop!) and she said that after the first day its gets pretty boring. So in your face.