Great Wall of China

8/27/11

Today we went to the Great Wall of China! Abby and I almost didn’t wake up on time, though. We were supposed to meet at 8am, and we woke up at 7:40. Still no alarm clock, so we’ve been trying to depend on our instincts. We’ll see how far that’ll get us…

Since we got up so late, I didn’t have time to grab any breakfast. We just got right onto the bus and we left for our two hour drive to the wall. Brother Paul and the other staff went with us too.

We got there and walked up a little bit, and bought our tickets for the ski lift up to the wall, and also for the toboggan ride down from it. About half of us took the ski lift while the other half hiked up the mountain side.

The wall was different than I expected. I thought it’d be a smooth surface to walk on, just hills. But it’s steps. Everything is steps. Even the straight-ish parts are steps. And the really steep parts have super tall steps that are killer. We all kind of split up, and I ended up walking with Amber, Jack, Gidianny, and Dana. We walked a lot farther than I would have gone on my own, which I guess is a good thing (though my muscles are now extremely sore). It was really beautiful, though. You could mostly see the sky, at least much better than you could in the city (which is not at all). There were mountains all around and trees, and it was just pretty J

After walking around for about two hours, we headed back to get in line for the toboggan. It was a bit of a wait, but totally worth it. There’s a metal track laid out that stretches all the way down from the wall to the market below. You get on a little plastic car thing and ride the slide down. It was really really fun!

When we were in the market again, I saw a shirt I wanted, and thought I’d have a go at haggling. He was asking for 50 kuai up front, and I was like no way! 是太贵！Even though 50 kuai is really not a horrendous amount for a T-Shirt. I told him I wanted it for 20, and he said 30. I said no, 20. He said 25. I said 20 again, haha. And he agreed. So I got a T-Shirt for about $3!

We all took the bus home, another 2 hour drive. It was 4pm by the time we got back. We were all starving, especially those of us who hadn’t eaten anything all day. Most of the people went off right away to grab food, and I wanted to go with them, but at the same time I wanted to drop my stuff off in my room, and so did Abby. So me, Abby, Gidianny, Emily, Tina, Adam, Bret, and Josh all went to lunch/dinner together. It’s the third restaurant we’ve been to on the trip. So far they’ve all tasted pretty much the same, and they all have basically the same food. But they’re all good, so it’s okay!

After we were done eating, we decided to go to the night market. So we hopped onto a bus and then onto the subway and then walked to the night market. Oh my goodness, the street it was on was so amazing. I felt like I was in New York. The whole wide street was open to walk on, and there were tall buildings and billboards everywhere. And then we got to the place we were looking for… :3

Vendors were lined up for probably half a mile, all selling all sorts of interesting foods. There were squid, crawfish, silk worms, cow testicles, sheep penises, sharks, etc. We tried sea snake, scorpion, stinky tofu, starfish, centipede, and shark.

After, we wandered around the area a little bit longer, and then took the subway and bus back home.

It’s funny, whenever we ride the subway, we always try to do or talk about something random. Yesterday it was about popsicles, today it was about super man. Adam would talk to the people on the subway and ask if they liked superman, and then told them he was superman’s little brother, and just have a conversation along with that.

Also, some of us learned what we now call zhongguo paishou, “the Chinese clap”. Josh taught it to us, and we named it that. Now we do it everywhere as we walk around, and it attracts a lot of attention.

We got home and I got on my computer to update my word-blog and to see if someone was on msn, and he was J. So I got to end my day good.