I woke up around 6am when I noticed a few others were climbing up to the watch tower to take some pictures.  Luckily, the sky was much clearer than the day before! I climbed up the super-steep and super-narrow steps of the watch tower to get a good view of the Wall.  Seeing it is just incredible! Ah! You all need to go see the Great Wall ? it?s just that AWESOME!!!! The Wall looks like a long snake that twists and turns and extends for miles and miles.  I guess it also kind of looks like the Chinese dragons that you see during the Chinese New Year because it goes up and down?up and down?up and down. 

 

We ate a great breakfast before setting off on our 4-hour hike.  I had muesli and a banana.  They also had coffee, tea, and noodles for us.  A lot of Chinese people eat instant noodles (they?re similar to our Cup Noodles) for any meal of the day ? breakfast, lunch, and/or dinner! The noodles are actually really good ? I sampled some of Ellie?s and they were yummy.  Once we cleaned up our ?campsite,? we were ready to start hiking. 

 

Our hike from Jinshanling to Simatai was about 7km and it was probably the hardest 7km walk I?ve ever done in my life! What?s even crazier is that there?s a marathon on the Great Wall next year ? Ah! Most sections of the wall are so incredibly steep ? whether it?s an incline or a decline.  One of our guides told us that a man actually hiked the whole wall.  It took him 2.5 years and it cost him his marriage, haha. 

 

We hiked through 37 watch towers.  I was so happy that we went to this part of the wall because parts of it were literally crumbling due to old age and destruction.  It was so neat to see that rather than perfectly packed bricks that replaced the old stones within the past 20 years.  I won?t keep going on and on about it?Basically you just need to see it to believe it and appreciate its ?AWESOMENESS!!!?

 

Something that made the hike even more memorable was the fact that we hiked with our 3 awesome guides, and some friendly farmers that we met along the way.  The farmers walked about halfway with us and then before they turned around, they tried to sell us stuff.  I talked to one of them for quite awhile.  She has 2 children in their twenties.  She told me that she?s been walking 5km on the wall almost everyday for the past 6 years ? even in the wintertime.  You could definitely tell she was in great shape.  She gets up and walks with tourists in the morning and then farms in the afternoons.  I decided that you can tell what economic class a Chinese person is in by shaking their hand.  Her hand was so rough!  She held my hand for a long time to make sure I didn?t slip and fall! Haha. At one point, she grabbed my hand and Becky?s hand and basically started sprinting up to one of the watch towers ? whew! That little burst of sprinting made me feel out of shape! I got a picture with her before she left us to head back to her farm.  Oh and by the way ? no, I did NOT buy anything from her!  It was really fun walking with the farmers because they surprisingly knew a decent amount of English, and they were eager to teach us some Chinese phrases.  The phrase of the day was ?Ay - Tai bang la!?  I?m sure that?s spelled wrong, but it means ?fantastic!?  The woman who seemed to really like me asked me how old I was.  I told her to guess my age and she said she thought that I was 15! FIFTEEN YEARS OLD ? Ha! Man, I need to do something about that!

 

We finally made it to Simatai, which is a portion of the Wall that?s more restored and touristy.  There?s even a zip line there!  Throughout the entire hike, I was completely mesmerized by the Great Wall, so the hike didn?t seem extremely long at all.  But, like I said before, it was probably one of the most physically challenging hikes I?ve ever done in my life!!!  Regardless, I?m so glad we did that rather than take a cable car up and walk along a restored portion of the wall.  This experience was absolutely priceless. 

 

Our group ate lunch at a restaurant before we piled into the minibus to head back to the city.  The meal was served on a lazy susan, which is extremely common in Chinese restaurants since dishes are usually served family-style.  They kept bringing out dishes and setting them on the lazy susan so we could spin it around and take as much as we wanted.  We ate dishes that were similar to ones we had the night before.  There were noodles, rice, chicken and peppers, egg and tomato, potato strings, peanuts, and a few others! 

 

When we arrived back in Beijing, we took a group trip to Wal-Mart.  Dad ? I know how much you love Wal-mart ? you would have loved this one for sure.  There were tons of free samples and stuff was obviously so cheap.  There were 2 levels that were connected by a moving sidewalk.  There were troughs of products like toothbrushes, gummy treats, and aspirin along the ?walkalator? so you could do some shopping as you went from one level to the next.  How cool is that?!  I got some fixings for trail mix and some chocolate to take back to the ship.  The chocolate didn?t make it back to the ship, but the trail mix stuff did! Oops! I thought it was really interesting that even though their product names were written in Chinese characters, we could still recognize ones like Minute Maid, Coca Cola, etc.  I guess advertising is effective if I?m able to recognize a product even when the label is in a different language!

 

Afterwards, we all returned to the hostel for much-needed showers! We were put in a different room similar to the one we had the first night at the hostel ? except this one had a little bit more character.  The showerhead was detached from the holder on the wall, so you had to hold it while you showered.  During the shower, the actual head broke off from the hose at least 3 times.  We didn?t have a shower curtain, so the entire bathroom was pretty drenched by the time the 6 of us finished taking our showers! I guess I?m thankful that I?m short because the guys had to squat in order to wash their hair and shoulders since the tub was raised off of the ground, haha.  Oh ? and our toilet seat?wow.  It was cracked and there was a piece of jagged plastic about the side of a ping pong ball (but not nearly as smooth as a ping pong ball!) sticking up out of the seat.  Ouch.

 

We headed out to dinner and the Silk Market once we were all clean and dressed in normal clothes again.  I had a successful night at the market even though we only had about an hour to shop before closing time.  I bought a pair of black and silver Nike shox for $14.50, a small painting of my name in Chinese Characters, a Coach wallet, and some other surprises!  Multiple people told me that I was a good bargainer and I?m pretty sure they really meant it.  I would name a price and stick to it basically no matter what and it worked for everything except for the shox that I wanted for $13.  I would pick something out and say, ?Okay, this is how much I?m going to pay you for this? rather than asking them their price because they just play the bargaining game, which can be just plain exhausting!

 Saturday 4/21: Beijing, China