Beijing - Day 3 - Sunday, February 21...The day of Greatness has finally arrived!!!

Now the day you have all been waiting for….Today is the day I will be on the Great Wall of China!!!

But first buffet breakfast and we will learn a little bit of Kung Fu. We visited the Beijing International Kung Fu School. They gave us a performance, showed us some moves and posed with us for pictures. This was an interesting school because students came here from all of China and spend a year studying academics and Kung Fu. We also found out that these students are used as extras for Martial Arts movies that are filmed in Beijing, which is pretty great…but not as great as the wall.

Everyone with the Kung Fu students:

So after Kung Fu we went to lunch at a restaurant that felt that we were in a greenhouse and we ate more pork dishes of course!!!

After lunch it was time for the Great Wall!!! W took cable cars up and as we were reaching our destination the amazement and wonder was building. When we reached the top it was only the beginning of what we would be seeing and it was mediocre…no just kidding it was GREAT!!!
View from the cable car:

The part of the wall that we visited is the Mutianyu Great Wall: 

 Me on the wall:

Bob (the trip leader) and I:

I walked over an hour, up and down stairs and over some steep paths through look out towers watching as the wall twisted and turned. It was amazing that at certain points I would be able to stop and see no other person for a few minutes at a time. Besides the 98 of us there were maybe 20 other people that I saw the whole time we were walking around which made the experience even more surreal. It was truly an amazing site to see and certainly earned it spot in the Seven Wonders of the World and makes it the 3rd I have seen. It is so interesting that I feel like I have the less to say about seeing the Great Wall than anything else and piece of that is not being able to verbalize (or express in writing) because it is hard to fully grasp the magnitude and power of what I saw.

I walked this whole part of the wall:

 

This may be the worst picture of me ever taken but I do not care because I get to tobbagon down the Great Wall of China!!!

 So once we got to the bottom of the wall we ended in a little shopping village where most people bought some fun souveniors.  I did splurge on a $2ish T-shirt that said I climbed the Great Wall, I thought this was very necessary!!!!

After the Wall it was another lazy susn dinner with mass amounts of Chinese Food.  The final piece of my visit to Beijing was to see a Chinese Acrobat show which blew the last amazing show out of the water.  Chinese Acrobatics is one of the oldest performing arts and it definately predates Cirque Du Soleil.  I think these acrobatics could run circles around the Cirque Du Soleil performers.  Here are some pics that came out OK from that performance:

I definately tried to get to bed early this evening knowing that we would be leaving for the airport at 4:30 in the morning.  It was hard to sleep because I was trying to wrap my head around the 6 days I had just spent in China and preparing to return to my Ship home.  The next day I will arrive to the ship in Hong Kong and spend my time there with a friend from Grad School, Ingrid...You do not know how much I needed that!!!! 

Side note:  Today is Actually March 4 and to give you a 1 paragraph update we are in heavy planning mode for the Sea Olympics that will happen in 2 days.  We are on a longer stretch then we have seen in a while, traveling 8 days from Hong Kong to India.  I am getting excited to be in India once again and this time get to see the Southern part of the country.  I will blog about my time with Ingrid in Hong Kong as well as the 5 days I spent in Vietnam prior to getting to India...I promise.  I am thinking of all you and am really grateful to know that you are reading up on my adventure.  Also thank you to those who have sent real mail it is really nice to receive it on the ship.