Day 11: The Great Wall

Today was my “go with the flow day” of the trip.  We got up early, packed, loaded the buses, and headed to the Badaling section of the Great Wall.  I took some “less-drowsy” Dramamine (I think the package lied- I’m pretty sure I fell asleep mid-sentence at one point) for the hour and a half bus ride so no motion sickness!  There were actually really nice roads up there and it wasn’t too windy which was a relief.  (Sorry for all the details about being car sick, but if you know me you know it’s one my greatest concerns.)  We got out at the Great Wall and it was quite hot but, luckily, Beijing is more of a dry heat, so it wasn’t as uncomfortable as it could have been.  There were SO many people there! Talk about tourists- there were easily more white people there than I have seen on every other day combined.  But it was so worth going- the area that we went to was GORGEOUS- I don’t think I’ve ever seen mountains more green in my life.  Even after being in Seattle, this was amazing.  The wall was really cool too; the scale of it is just magnificent and it’s amazing to think about the manpower that was harnessed to create it.  Badaling is one of the most restored sections, so the stairs were fairly even, but it was still challenging to get to the top because of the massive amounts of people.  We only had an hour or so to spend there because we had to get back for a lunch seminar, but I literally could not have stayed much longer just because of all the sweaty people touching me and the unpleasant odors.  (Pictures! Ok, I doctored these just a teeny bit, but the sky was blue today!!!)

**Maggie had two pictures added right here, but I don't have time to add them right now. They will be up this evening.**

After the Great Wall, we went to a restaurant called “Southern Beauty” that specialized in Sichuan cuisine, which, I now know, is very spicy.  This meal was easily the most adventurous I have so far had here.  We started with some cold appetizer dishes including jelly fish (this was the one thing I didn’t try), black fungus, stuffed duck/egg, some weird chicken thing and some other bizarre things I can’t really remember.  It actually was all pretty good and I guess it was good that it was already there for us because I never would have been brave enough to order that on my own.  I also continued to follow the good advice I recently got of not asking what something is if you like it.  We had a ton of other dishes (we had a great time with the lazy susan) which were mostly spicy and quite good.  And we had Peking duck, which I was told I had to try in Beijing, so I can now check that off the list.  It wasn’t too bad actually.  Then we had Mr. Fang, a CEO at some company up here, talk to us about the future of China and how it affects us.  He had some interesting points and put a lot of stress on the influence our generation will have.  So motivational. 

            So then we got back on the bus and took the interns from Changsha and Shenzhen to the airport and the Beijing kids back to their apartments. This left the fifteen of us Shanghai interns with a few hours left and a bus to use, so we ended up going to the Olympic park and looking at some of the things there.  This wasn’t the most exciting thing ever, and I was sad I never got to go to the Forbidden City or Summer Palace, but I think we were all so tired from the night before that it really didn’t matter where we went.