more fun on a bike

it's noon on friday here. i rode around on a bike this morning. the girl at the hostel insisted i use hers for free instead of renting one. she paid about $0.25 for this bike, and in my opinion, she overpaid. my knees were in my chest, the seat had no padding, and the brakes did not work at all. so i had to go very slow because i would often have to suddenly stop to keep from getting killed. the worst problem with traffic here is the right turn on red. it's apparently legal, so they do it constantly without stopping or even slowing down. so to cross with the light, you have to aim your bike to almost hit car #1 to be able to slide right behind it and avoid being hit by car #2. it's really hard with no brakes. but somehow i survived. there are very old pagodas and towers here, but they charge money just to go look at them, so i just took pictures from afar. this one giant goose pagoda (that's the name, not the shape) was in this big park so i kept working my way around it to get a good picture. i ended up in some communist party compound of some sort, and when about 7 burly army guys headed toward me i realized i shouldn't be there. i got a good picture though. this afternoon i am going to a museum where there are thousands of stone tablets with old chinese religious writing on them. it's supposed to be very interesting. tonight at the hostel they are having a dumpling party, so i'll be making and eating some of the stuff i ate last night. i'm sure it won't be as good. that about does it for xian. i guess it gets in the 100's here in summer, so i'm glad to be heading out of here in mid-may. the weather is great now.