Alise Zirilli writes

Early this morning we all awoke aboard a train that was taking us to Beijing.  We spent about 12 hours traveling overnight in a train.  We also all got the first class treatment on the train with four soft beds in a room compared to either having to sit in a chair or lying on a very hard bed.  On the bus ride to Beijing Sport University we were introduced to Gracie and Wang Chuan. 

Once we arrived at the university we unpacked, ate lunch and got ready for the Great Wall.  It took us about an hour to arrive at the Great Wall.  The second we stepped off the bus we were surrounded by people trying to sell us stuff.  This was a bit overwhelming because a lot of people have never experienced such aggressiveness with people trying to sell things.  After getting way from all the vendors we began our hike up the Great Wall.  We decided to take the more challenging, but shorter climb up the Great Wall.  We climbed up many stairs and very steep slopes until we reached the end point.  At the end point there was some people selling plaques stating we climbed the Great Wall.  Only Natalie was able to get her’s personalized and paid for before the police came to look for them, because they did not have permits to sell stuff on the Great Wall.  So as the police officer started to walk up the Wall, the illegal vendor climbed over the Great Wall into the woods to hide.  After many pictures we began our descent of the Great Wall.  It was a slow walk down because it had been raining and the ground was slippery.  At the bottom of the Great Wall we were given time to shop and practice our bargaining skills for the first time in China.

When we arrived back at the University we cleaned up a little bit then headed to dinner.   After dinner we all just went back to the dorm and had some down time.  We worked on getting the Internet to turn on and just hung out with one another.  At 10:00pm Hongwei, Kelly, and Mel headed to meet Hongwei’s friend at the tennis court for a friendly match.  Hongwei and his friend beat Kelly and Mel in doubles 6 to 2. Kelly and Melanie say their rackets were worse then the guy’s rackets, but Hongwei insists that all the rackets were bad.  So who should we believe? Even though Kelly and Melanie lost in the doubles match, when Hongwei played Melanie, there was a new winner and that was Melanie.