Off to Xi'an

Just for a quick update on a crazy week:
My friend who took Chinese class with me at Seattle Language Academy arrived in Chengdu on Monday with his two roommates. He had been working in Beijing for like a week (he works for Microsoft) and now they are traveling around the country. We went to hot pot and had tea and I've been sending them around places since I am really busy right now and cannot accompany them. Tuesday night Laura, Andrea, Matthew and I hosted quiz night. We had written the questions before (we each picked a category or two and did 10 questions for each - I did a food category and a science category) and Matt emceed while Andrea, Laura, and I collected, passed out, and scored the answer sheets.
My bike has also started to make horrible noises when I ride it, like it's about to fall apart. The weird thing is it still rides fine, it just makes this rally loud, constant clacking noise that sounds like popcorn being popped, but more metal on metal. I am going to try and get it fixed again, but I haven't had time yet so for now it just makes me and Laura laugh. For some reason it is so funny and we will ride down the street cracking up, drawing even more attention to ourselves than usual. Laura says that I should keep it because it acts like a constant bell (my real bell broke awhile ago) and people always know I'm coming. And I probably would keep it if the noise wasn't so disconcerting, and annoying.
I have been trying since Monday to get in the lab and finish my calibration to no avail. Monday the grad student who is helping me had something come up, Tuesday we went but then they didn't have what I needed in the lab and they said they would find one and I could come back tomorrow. So I showed up this afternoon after History and Culture class at 5pm and they had found me the thing I needed. However, the problems had only just began. After struggling with this supposedly simple test for hours I finally finished well enough to use the data and decided to call it a night (as they were locking all the doors and I did not want to be locked in).
I had also told a Chinese friend who will be going to UW next year that I would go participate in her English corner on the new campus tonight, but I had to end up cancelling because I really needed to get my research done this time. It was actually kind of a blessing in disguise because I didn't want to go, I was just doing it to be nice, and I still have a lot of stuff to do tonight and the new campus is a LONG way away.
So tomorrow we are leaving for Xi'an for an archeology field trip for 5 days. We is Laura, Deb, Matthew, Ben, Tabitha, our two archeology teachers, and 4 Chuan Da students. I am really excited about the trip, it should be really interesting and really fun.