First night in China was a success, I can say. We all went out to the bars and when we discovered that the cabs won’t let you sit in laps, my roommate Eamon and I decided to walk (run) to the bars instead. Of course, we had no idea where we were going and ended up getting ice cream at KFC instead. There are no fewer than 5 KFCs that I could hit with a rock from our hotel at Beijing University.
At 9:30 this morning, we piled into a bus and drove out to the Great Wall of China. I guess it’s good that we’re putting our tourist caps on quickly. We do only have 2 weeks here and there’s a lot to do in Beijing. Anyways, the 30 minute drive there was great, lots of fun times reminiscing about Nickelodeon (what an ice breaker) and checking out lots of par and sub-par walls along the way.
The Great Wall itself was really what I had imagined, but the feeling of being there on a 1,000+ year old structure was really incredible. I expect to feel a lot of that while I’m here. I couldn’t stop thinking about Mulan and the Mongolians too. It’s a good thing they never made it in to Beijing.
The wall kicked my out-of-shape butt, too. Prof. Liu told us that there were some 600 steps up to the top, but I’m not sure if that was just to the beginning of the wall or in total. All in all, I think we walked about a mile’s worth of stairs, and I’m definitely feeling it now.
The biggest surprise to me about the Great Wall was how dang commercial it was! There were hundreds of vendors selling all of the same stuff, and it was really overwhelming. I felt fortunate that I escaped having only bought one thing-others among us where not so lucky. I have a very hard time turning down the street vendors too. They scared us good about what’s good to eat and what’s bad to eat and street vendors pretty regularly show up on the “bad to eat” category, though I’m sure I’ll break down some point really soon.
After an afternoon nap and dinner at a nearby restaurant (ordering food is way way way too complicated), we were all too tired to go out so we called it an early night. Gotta get ready for 8:30 class in the morning!
Friend, street vendors are where it’s at for food. If you see other white people in a restaurant, GTFO! Anyways, you look like you’re having a blast. xoxo.