The Great Wall!!!!!!

            Never in my life did I ever really think that I would go and see places like the Taj or the Great wall. Yet, today I went and saw the Great Wall!!! First, we went to a Kung Fu school where the students performed some of the Kung Fu moves for us. Some of them start learning as early as 3 years old and they practice for about 4 hours a day. Kind of crazy but I guess you need it to get really good. After they showed us their moves, they tried to teach us a string of moves. That was really funny because we were very bad at it. Again, they didn’t know any English so we couldn’t really just talk to them. Lucia told us that most people learn English but can’t really hold a conversation and end up saying “Welcome to China” – which was exactly what one of the students said as we were leaving – kind of funny. Oh, and they had a basketball court, which I thought was ironic because it is quite an American sport but it’s popular in China now because of that famous Chinese player (Yao?). Still, it was pretty cool to see them perform, especially with the weapons at the end.

            After, we went to another restaurant and learned about jade. They showed us how to identify real jade from fake, but the shop itself was crazy expensive so I don’t think anyone actually bought anything. Finally, we headed for the Wall. We eventually got there and you could just see the wall for on in both directions without stopping. After getting through the market at the bottom, we took a cable car up to the wall. The stones are quite large and it is in good shape for the most part. Many of the steps are uneven and the path goes up and down quite a lot. The view from the wall was amazing: snow-capped mountains framing the horizon. It is a little unbelievable to be there, knowing how old it is. It is also much longer than you think because it not only goes up and down but snakes back and forth along the mountain ridge. We thought we were right on time and then realized that we had only gone half the distance and were about to be late. SO we had to hurry up for the last stretch, but it was very similar to the first part that we saw. Our trip had arranged for us to toboggan down, which I’ve never tobogganed in my life so I was very excited! My trip leader was flipping out because he has a fear of heights and wide, open spaces so he couldn’t toboggan – he ended up walking. It was a seat with a lever for you to control your speed (or really just brake or not) and you rode on a metal semi-circular canal thing that snaked back and forth as it made it’s way back to the market area. I was behind a girl who I thought was recording it, but really she was super scared. So, she was going too slow for me, but I would just go slowly, create a distance and then zip right up behind her. It was pretty fun and these Chinese guys behind me were doing the same thing so it was pretty hilarious. We left a bit late and tried to book it back to Beijing so we could see the acrobat show. We got there just in the nick of time, missing the intro (which wasn’t acrobatics). I’ve never seen Cirque du Soleil or anything like that, but this blew mind! They had people doing tricks you would never just think of: a girl juggling an umbrella with her feet, a girl doing ballet atop of a guy, fitting 12 girls onto a bicycle, cramming 5 motorcycles into one of those small cages! CRAZY! It was quite spectacular! I really, really enjoyed it. After our very busy day, we just headed back to the hotel after dinner.