Written by Michelle Danley

May 28th.  This morning we woke up on the train, eager to finally arrive in Beijing. We packed up our little sleeper car rooms, made sure we had all our bags and headed into the train station to meet up with Gracie and Chwan, our guides for our stay at Beijing Sport University (BSU). We loaded our luggage onto the bus and began our drive to the 5^th ring of the city where BSU is located. The trip wasn’t too long, and we didn’t run into any major traffic. When we arrived at BSU we had time to settle into our rooms, take a shower, and relax before lunch. Lunch was good but the food was much more similar to Chinese food you would get in the United States than what we had been eating previously on our trip.

After lunch we piled back into the bus and headed off to the Great Wall! The drive to the wall took about an hour, and as we got closer we could see remnants of the wall from the bus, and we got even more excited. When we finally arrived we got off the bus and had to walk up the hill a little ways to get to the entrance for the wall. As we walked we had all the vendors along the way asking us to buy different things, but we had to wait till afterwards. Even though it was raining lightly, and there was a fog over the mountains we all couldn’t wait to start climbing the Great Wall! Nick decided that we were going to walk up the harder of the two different paths that we could choose from since it usually had less people. It was a pretty tough climb at times, with one section which felt like almost an 80 degree angle with varying sized steps. Other sections were just very steep inclines. The view was amazing despite the weather. When we finally reached the top/where we had to turn around because the wall was decaying, we were so excited and began taking our group pictures. At the top we also saw some people trying to sell us souvenirs. I didn’t buy anything from them, but some of the other girls were going to, but all of a sudden they packed up their stuff and jumped over the edge of the wall! It turns out they didn’t have a permit to be selling things on the wall and the police were coming. We were all really curious as to what was happening, and peered over the wall after the police went over after them, but we never did find out what ended up happening.  The climb back down was almost as difficult as the climb up because we had to go really slow so we didn’t lose our footing and fall forwards down the steep slopes. At the bottom we took another group photo in front of the monument of calligraphy by Chairman Mao, which translates to “You are not a true man/hero until you have climbed the Great Wall”. We then had a chance to do some shopping, and practice our bargaining skills. Most people found some things to buy and we all got some pretty good deals, so it was a successful first attempt at bargaining, and we couldn’t wait for another chance to go shopping!

When we got back to campus we had dinner and all took a look around the grocery store on campus. We then headed back to the rooms and hung out for the rest of the night. Hongwei and his friend did take on Kelly and Melanie in a late night tennis match. Each pair won a game and they had a good time, and they said the facility was really nice! We all then went to bed tired from our long hike up the Great Wall!