Shelby in Xi'an: part of the Whitman family

When I last left off on chronological blogging, I was telling you about how many Whitties were around 2 weekends ago. LOTS. In addition to the ex-teachers and Chinese medicinal scholars we spent time with on Friday, we also saw Karlis, a current Whitman junior who is studying abroad in Beijing this semester. Karlis was in Xi'an for the weekend with a group from his school before heading further west along the Silk Road. Karlis knew Ma Jing when she was at Whitman, so the four of us all met up in the afternoon outside the museum that Karlis had been visiting.
From there, we walked to the Big Goose Pagoda and walked around it for awhile, then took a bus toward Ma Jing's apartment, stopping for some candied hawberries on the way:

It turns out that Ma Jing lives only a block or two from the actual starting point of the Silk Road, where there is now a really cool statue of a caravan heading West:

Ma Jing's husband (who does most of the family's cooking) made us a fabulous dinner with at least six different dishes, so we spent a long time at the Ma house (in Chinese names, the family name goes first, for anyone who was unaware) drinking tea and eating food with Ma Jing, her husband, and her son. At one point, we heard Ma Jing speak to her son referring to Kitty and I as his jiejie and Karlis as his gege – older sister and older brother in Chinese – so we felt very welcomed into the family. We might even get to tag along to a relative's wedding at some point, if the timing is right!
Here is a photo of Kitty and I with our didi (little brother) at lunch the day after Teachers' Day (note that Ma Jing gave me these first few photos and is thus not in any of them):