A Wonderful Wall

I did it! A 6 mile hike on some of the toughest terrain of the Great Wall and I came back pretty much unscathed (except for some really sore muscles and complete fear of having to climb stairs ever again). I found this trip through a random hostel that I passed the other day. I reported to the bus at 6:20am this morning. They gave me a strange egg sandwich breakfast that had 3 pieces of bread, ham, an egg, and what I believe was breaded eggplant. Anyway, we set off on a 3 hour bus ride to the mountains. We passed all the main tourist sections of the wall and eventually got to this area called JinShanLing. There were about 35 people with my group from all over the world: Israel, Germany, Brazil, France, Mexico, US, Thailand. It's pretty amazing to hear someone speak Polish to their friends and then turn to the driver and speak fluent Chinese to him, but then speak English to everyone else. I couldn't help but be incredibly jealous of their sweet skills. When we were at the base of the mountains about to set lose on the trail, I befriended a guy from Brazil, Carlos. He hasn't actually lived in Brazil for two years because he went to Australia to make money and learn English, now he's checking out Asia and Beijing is his first stop, after a few more stops around Asia he wants to go to London in the Fall for a bit. I can't help but mention that he had this huge tattoo of the world map on his leg and he wore flip-flops on this hike. We made a deal at the beginning that we would be happy to take pictures of each other on the wall because we both have families complaining that we aren't in any pictures :-)

Moving on, the wall was absolutely amazing. This was probably the most tiring thing I have ever done to experience history and culture. The slopes were very steep most of the time going up and down. There were lots of Chinese people haggling on the wall trying to get you to buy their ice cold water or their "I Climbed the Great Wall" t-shirts. That would get a little annoying after a while, but it couldn't ruin the amazing picturesque world I was walking through. Unfortunately the pictures really don't do it justice, so I didn't take any.

Just kidding. They're right here.

On a completely unrelated note. If your not sick of looking at pictures or you're bored at work, take a look at these great architectural finds.

My legs are numb from all the stairs. I'm off to bed. Goodnight.