Jill being taken care of the doctors and our two translators, Miranda and Lizzy.
We were getting ready to leave Xi’an after 2.5 days of craziness and insanely busy exhibition hall cruising.
Think about this for a second:
In 2.5 days we had:
1) Taken an overnight train to Xi’an.
2) Seen the Terra Cotta Army.
3) Seen a major exhibition and expo and been a guest of honor by EACHAM.
4) Stayed in a 5 star hotel in Xi’an, all expenses paid.
5) Met the head of the whole expo and been able to drink some amazing wine with him and the winemaker at Kaiwai Vineyards.
6) Been invited to come visit the Kaiwai Winery and stay there if we come back.
7) Jill had been interviewed on Shaanxi television (that is the province where Xi’an is located) about Jill’s company and websites: www.sftourismtips.com and www.allaboutredwine.com.
8)Rode a tandem bicycle on top of all 16 kilometers of the Xi’an wall with new friends from countries including New Zealand, Sweden, Austria. Later that night we met up with new friends from Germany, Portugal, Russia and Turkey. 14 people (including us): 8 countries.
9) Met two fantastic new friends, Lizzy and Miranda, who served as our interpreters, and got them to try some wine and beer with us at the expo. Yes, we are bad influences. Honestly, I think they had as much fun as we did and they will come visit us when we are back in the USA.
10) Went to a Chinese bar named, “Mexico” which had Micheladas and chips and salsa. Well, they had chips. Instead of salsa they had honey mustard dressing. Yeah, not quite the same thing as in Mexico but you do what you can in a small city of “only” 10 million people in China.
11) I was interviewed for a local Xi’an newspaper on our experience at the expo.
12) Explored the “Muslim quarter” of Xi’an inside the Xi’an wall.
Then, to top it all off, just as we were leaving the expo, Jill tripped over an exposed power cord and fell.
And fell HARD.
I was a few feet in front of her and couldn’t do a thing until I saw her sprawled on the ground.
I immediately reached down to check on her and she had hit her knee, then her shoulder and finally, her head.
That is what really scared me.
Her eyebrow started to show signs of bruising immediately and a huge crowd of people gathered about as quickly as someone could say, “DOWN GOES FRAZIER” in China!
Luckily, the people working the expo, including our two translators, Lizzy and Miranda, saw it happen and ran over to help.
The expo people brought over a doctor and he checked Jill out and we waited around for about 30 minutes as they ordered a private car to take us back to the hotel.
it is a pretty brutal bruise and it was quite a scene at the expo as loads of people started milling around trying to help, give advice and offering us our choice of local hospitals.
Luckily, Jill didn’t have any headaches, dizziness, or blurred vision so it seems as if he eye had gotten the worst of it and her brain was okay. We decided not to go to a local hospital and wait and see how things go.
If we needed, we could go to where I work and she’d have the best medical care in China.
Call me biased, but it is true.
We took the private car back to the hotel and decided to wait on the second floor balcony overlooking the lobby.
As we waited at the hotel to go home on a high speed train, three women got in a fight in the lobby in full view of everyone sitting there.
Yes, you just read that right: 3 Chinese women in a 5 star hotel started fighting with each other. It took an expat friend of ours to walk in the middle and break it up.
Seriously, you’d think that Jill and I make this stuff up to add spice to our lives and stories.
We don’t.
This is the reality of living in China.
Honestly, it is nothing out of the ordinary.
Just another day in the life of Jill and Aram in China.