Beijing Part 2

Back to where I left off...
We got on the bus after the Silk Market and everyone was exhausted so everyone fell asleep instantly on the bus.  It was about a 2 hour drive to the Great Wall.  We went to the Jinshanling area of it which is more original and not restored as much as the other parts.  It’s not every day you wake up from your nap and you look out the window to the Great Wall.  We went to the Great Wall and we hiked up it to watch the sunset which was so beautiful.  After the sunset, we hiked back down to our bus and then got on it and went to dinner. 
        Dinner was good!  We sat at these huge tables with like a revolving table in the center and they just kept brining food out and putting it on the table.  We had everything!  Dumplings, white rice, soup, orange pork, noodles… just everything!  I forget all we had because there was so much food!  Oh and broccoli! There was broccoli there too.  After dinner we went to our bus and got dressed to sleep on the great wall!  Everyone was layering up because it was soooo cold out.  We then drove back to the part of the Great Wall we hiked to see the sunset, and we were handed a dinky little flashlight to shine our way up all these steps to where we were going to sleep. So then we started our hike!  And it was tough.  Very very tough.  It was all stairs and it just kept winding and winding upwards and we couldn’t see where we were going only just a bunch of flashlights in front of us.  Me, Christina, and this kid Taylor were beasting it though.  We didn’t know we were the only ones from our group so far ahead and we were hiking with the other group.  We started rocking out to some music and we got to the top…. Only to find out we had to hike more along the wall to get to our watchtower.  We had to climb through one watchtower and down this tiny, tiny ladder (all in the dark remember!)  and then across the wall where it’s falling apart and some parts of it had no sides… and then we got to our watchtower and had to hoist ourselves up into our watchtower.  The only step we had to get into the watchtower were 4 rocks piled on top of each other.  Oh, and by the way… we were listening to Mulan as soon as we got on the wall and all the way to our watchtower.  We got in our watchtower and cracked open a celebratory beer and waited while the rest of our group got there.  When they got there, we were playing Mulan, “I’ll make a man out of you” for them.  Before everyone else got there we were touring the watchtower and we went to the other side and it was a straight drop.  So when Tommy got there we asked him which way we would be hiking and when he pointed in the way that the drop was we showed him the drop and he just goes… “ohmygod!”  He did not know that it was a drop there.  But then he realized that we had to walk in front of the tower and then we climbed back onto the wall.
        Me, Patty, and Christina went outside to star gaze and Tommy our tour guide was standing in the opening of the watchtower going… “oh you so brave!”  because he thought we were brave for sitting out there because it was cold and rocky and all.  And he didn’t want us sleeping out there because there were no walls and it was hilly and he wanted us in the watchtower to sleep.  So he kept going, “oh you so brave”.  And then he went… “ahhhh…. So beautiful…. So original… so natural” and we were like… “what tommy?”  And he was saying that the part of the wall we were on was the most original part of it and it has not been restored.
We then went to bed and we each got a mat and 2 sleeping bags and I was like a cocoon in it.  It was hard to move in but sooo warm.  At one point I went to turn and I was sleeping next to a wall in the watchtower and I hit the wall with my hand and a bunch of pebbles came crashing down.
We were supposed to wake up for the sunrise but we all slept through it and missed it by like 10 minutes.  But whatever, we saw the sunset so I guess that’s enough.  And when we woke up we were all laying there and this guy comes around the corner and goes… “HELLO!!!!”  and it was the funniest thing ever.  After we all grabbed some breakfast and coffee and rolled our bags up we started out for our hike!  We found out that we hiked like 1440 steps the night before!  Oh and ps… we had a kid on cructches in our group!  That’s how awesome my group is.  And then on the hike we all stuck together and it only took us 2 hours to hike 4 miles of the wall to the Simatai section.  After we got to that section… we ZIPLINED across the river!  It was sooooo much fun!  We then walked down to the restaurant and got more food (basically what we ate the night before) and then we got on the bus and headed to the Olympic Greens. 
Once we got on the bus everyone passed out instantly and we woke up to Tommy waking us up at the Olympics.  We saw the birds nest and the water cube and attempted jumping pictures.  Which by the way… are VERY hard.  We took like 5 minutes to get a good one on the Great Wall and it actually took us a little less at the Olympic Stadium.  So as we are leaving there…. Who do we see?  THE RUGBY TEAM again!!  They were EVERYWHERE.  And I also saw Steph who was on a different trip then me! 
After the Olympics, we went back to our hotel and we got ready to go see an acrobatic show.  It was INSANE!  Like the things they did were incredible.  There was one point all these girls got on the same bike.  And then there was another part where like these 2 guys were on this craft in mid air and they would run around it and it would go around in circles and one guy was on top of it blindfolded!  It was INSANE!  After the acrobatic show, we just went out and met up with other semester at Sea people.
The next morning, we woke up and went to this park called Jingshan Park and went up to the Coal Hill which overlooked all of the Forbidden City.  It was amazing.  While we were up there we walked around and then dressed up as empresses!  And when we went to undress there was a couple dressing up and they wanted a picture of us and be a family!  After that, we did some dancing with some elders in the park, tai chi, and we did this paddle thing and it holds a ball on it.  Then we left and grabbed some lunch before catching a taxi to catch a flight to Hong Kong.  Our flight to Hong Kong was delayed a half hour but we arrived in Hong Kong around 8:30ish and got to the ship which was docked on Kowoloon Island around 10.  The mall we were docked at had free wi-fi and I skyped with Lauren and Ben and John and Gracie, and went on Facebook and posted my pictures from Japan.  It was nice to skype and go on websites that we are deprived of here on the ship.  I went to bed around 1:15 am to prepare for a busy 2 days in Hong Kong.  That’s it for today and I will try and write about Hong Kong tomorrow. 
Tomorrow we get to Vietnam!  So if I don’t write tomorrow, I will try my best to do it soon!