I am extremely frustrated right now. My last blog entry was unfinished since the internet here cuts out without warning. I have spent the last 45 min updating my blog and the internet just cut out 30 min early, and I lost it all. I am not going to rewrite it for a third time so I will now do bullet points of what I wrote before. I am not happy.

1. Met the rest of the tour group the morning after the Forbidden City, everyone was really nice.
2. Went to the Temple of Heaven where locals go in the morning to exercise all together. It is also where the emporers used to give sacrifices to the Gods for a good harvest.
3.Went to the Pearl Market afterwards. It is three floors of market stalls selling EVERYTHING. I got some gloves for 25 Yuan (about 3 dollars) down from 55 Yuan.
4. Went grocery shopping for food that we would need for lunch during our Great Wall trek the next day. It was a bit difficult shopping for food when you can understand any of the labels, but managed to get supplies for PB and J sandwiches along with some fruit and drinks.
5. Went to a night market that night where I tried scorpion (kind of nice), snake (very rubbery), and some liver dumplings (very good!)

Orginally that was described with personality and energy...you have chinese internet service to thank for the lack of that.

The next morning (this is last Saturday) we had a 4 hour drive to the Great Wall. This quickly turned into a 2 hour drive when our driver decided the speed limit did not apply to him. The plan was that we would hike with out day packs, leaving our massive backpacks on the bus. We would hike along the Great Wall for 4 hours and then a short walk to our hostel, the bus would meet us there. We had a guide for the hike whose name was HiLow (well that was how it was pronounced) but when we found out that means Sea Dragon, we just called him that for the rest of the trip. We were all bundled up since it was pretty chilly as we started walking towards the wall. We couldnt actually see it yet, but we were told we would be climbing about 10,000 steps in the next four hours (talk about intense stair master!) and would be traveling 10 km on the wall. As we walked up, locals kept following up trying to sell books about the wall and postcards. I got to use my new Madarin phrase of "Boo Sheair Sheair" meaning "no, thank you" and it worked wonders! We started climbing some steps, which got steep pretty fast and soon we were already stripping off layers. Finally we came upon the Wall, and it was amazing. There was an archway that we entered, then up a set of stone steps and we came to a clearing on the wall, and when I turned around and saw that iconic winding wind, I was stunned. It was absolutely amazing.

Now, I'm not sure what you might think about the Great Wall, but it is not an easy hike. It is downright dangerous to hike in some places, and it is steep and rocky and there are no handrails. If the Great Wall was in the US, you would have to sign a waiver to hike it. Every moment of the four hour hike was incredible, with awesome views and the weather was perfect for it. I cannot imagine doing that in the summer. And I have some spectacular photos from it....which i cant upload since this computer isnt recognizing my camera. which makes me very unhappy. again. At the end of the four hours we can to a sort of exit (there was no way to actually get off the wall before then) and we could actually see our hostel from where we were. We started walking down this mountain towards it when we came across a zip slide. It cost 35 Yuan to zip slide down the mountain and over this river towards the hostel...obviously i wanted to it. It was an awesome way to end the hike, zip lining down with views of the Great Wall of China.

We had dinner at the restaurant that was at the hostel that night and in the morning we all got up at 6 am to hike back to the Great Wall and watch the sunrise. Lillian had made it sound like we could just go back to where we had left the wall to see the sunrise...we ended up having to hike up a really steep part of the wall to see just a glimpse of it, but I did get a pretty amazing picture...which I cant show you right now.....

We got in the bus at about 9 am to head back to Beijing, where we had some free time before we needed to catch a 9:30 pm overnight train to Xi'An. I headed over to the Olympic Stadium with some other people from the group for the afternoon. It was nice to see the Water Cube and the Birds Nest, but we didnt want to pay to go inside so we watched kids falling on their faces at some ice rink instead.

The overnight train was an experience. We were in a hard sleeper train which entailed six bunks in one room, three beds on each wall stacked on top of the each other. The top bunk was about 7-8 ft above the ground so you had to be a bit flexible to get up there. Inbetween the bunks there was enough room for two people to stand uncomfortably. With all this space we also needed room for 6 people's large backpacks...needless to say it was a bit squished. But we survived and got off the train at 8:30 am the next morning only a little worse for wear. We checked into our hotel which was really really close to the train station and was incredibly nice. I have my own room, with two beds and a western style toilet (i have a picture of what a normal toilet looks here...be prepared!). We showered and then Lillian took us on an orientation walk of Xi'An. I really like Xi'An, more so than Beijing as it has much more of a chinese culture than Beijing. It seems as though the olympics have sucked some culture out of Beijing without it getting westernized, leaving it a bit bland. Xi'an thrives with local life and many many stalls that sell delicious street food for dirt cheap. Yesterday I went with two people from the group and got massages! It was advertised as "Massage bythe Blind" but really it was one blind guy and two non-visually impaired people. It was a bit strange...but good.

We arrived on the last day of the chinese new year festivities, and fireworks were going off everywhere at night. After we had a group dinner we were waiting at a bus stop and someone started lighting massive fireworks 15 feet from us, near all the buildings and traffic!!

i think the internet is about to cut off again, but very quickly...today we all went to the Terracotta warriors. Basically, if you havent heard of them, some emporer decided that he wanted to make sure he would still rule in the afterlife so he had people build a ton of these clay warriors to proitect him and use as an army. He ended up dying 30 years after they started the building of them, but they carried on the project for four decades! In 1973 some farmers were making a well and they stumbled upon them, so they have been excating them since then. They were pretty awesome to see..and I have photos but, you know the story!