我们常常去长城: The Great Wall

The title of this post is a little joke from Chinese class. The sentence means 'we often go to the Great Wall,' but it's so funny to say in chinese- 'women chang chang qu chang cheng.' Our own little tongue twister!

Just a donkey on the way up:

All the tourist stores:

On the climb up, so tired!

 So many stairs:

 We woke up early since we had to meet at 8:30am outside of Shaoyuan. We were super lucky because the weather was gorgeous out. There were blue skies, and it wasn't too smoggy! The bus ride there took about 1 hour 40 minutes. Not too bad, when Rachel went with her parents it took them 4 hours to get to the closest part of the wall! Crazy. It was during the National Holiday, but still, the traffic here is awful. Spent the bus napping and listening to our fellow classmate talk obnoxiously non-stop. I know that sounds mean but everyone was going crazy. He was talking about things like Stalin, Lenin, South Korea, God, production goods, and Egypt's workforce? It was just very loud and annoying.

View from the wall:

Rachel (with peeing boy in background):

Once at the wall we headed up to the entrance. It was super crowded and there were people everywhere. You could take a cable car up to the top, which cost 65 kuai, but we were like, "Obviously not! We're walking!" I can now see why people take the cable car. You basically walk up hundreds of steps and you are literally climbing a mountain. It was extremely tiring, but an awesome workout. And it was 100% worth it when you got to the top. There were amazing views, and the Great Wall itself is just incredible.

As Marco told me, it is the only man-made structure visible from space. It was amazing looking at all the mountains and seeing all the towers that were part of the wall. It just goes on forever! It reminded me of that scene in Lord of the Rings, the one where Merry lights that big stack of hay at the evil king's place (the one with the burning tree?), and then all the other towers see it and light theirs. We thought it was going to be pretty chilly so I wore my Uggs, leggings, long sleeved shirt, and leggings. It was boiling! We went down to this one tower and were taking cute pictures through the doorways and this little Chinese kid walks into the bathroom and just starts peeing! We were like, ummmm??? You don't pee on the Great Wall!

So we walked on and took lots of photos. They sell drinks all over the wall, and there were so many foreigners. We went to the MuTianYu part of the Great Wall. It's less busy than the other parts and is further away in the Northeastern suburbs of Beijing. It was really strange being there. I went once when I first came to Beijing in 2000? But I was eleven years old! We went to a different part of the wall, but it's just crazy looking back and seeing how much has changed in the past 8/9 years. My life is completely different! And Beijing is too. I'm sure I'll be back at the Great Wall at some point in my future and my life will be completely different then also.

So we walked on. Rachel and Heather took the cable car back down, but Katie and I walked back down. We'd rather spend the 60 kuai on buying something at all the touristy shops at the bottom. We walked down with some other CIEE people and got some awesome pictures. Of course we just had to look at all the stalls. I bought some postcards (many of you will be getting them soon!), a tshirt and a giant, smushy, round panda. I saw it in Hong Kong and have wanted it ever since I laid my eyes on it, but it's always so expensive. I was totally on my bargaining game though and got it for 30 kuai. Awww yeah! It's name is Tuantuan- which means round.

Tuan Tuan, the most amazing panda:

Best jumping picture of the day:

Amazing parousels for sale:

On the drive back I took a nap. Luckily loud classmate decided to also. We got back home around 3:30pm, relaxed and ate some food. We met some friends from the hotel at 7:30pm and went to Korean Barbecue. For 48 kuai it's all you can eat and all you can drink. You go and pick all this raw meat and vegetables, then cook it yourself on this little stove thing in front of you. It was really cool. Of course I just ate pounds of bacon, but it was worth it. We tried the other Chinese alcohol, MaoTai, which is much better tasting then Baijiu. We went back to the hotel afterwards and hung out there for a while, then headed to Wudaokou. Two of the guys on our program work as promoters for a club there, so a bunch of us went to support their first event! Needless to say, it was a very fun, but late night.