The Great Wall of China

Elizabeth (Liz)

Phew...Its taken me awhile to get this down because oh boy its a lot. This morning we were still tired from last night so we slept in late (yikes!) But it was still okay because we were able to get up quickly and eat breakfast. Afterwards Kelby, Mrs. Waterman and I (Iona stayed in today because she was sick) all went with Kelly to the Jade Market. It was actually really cool to see how they polished and carved the jade. Jade can come in many forms like agate but the most popular jadite and the harder the stone the more expensive. Also real jade will look like cloudy glass and will be cooler to the touch than fake jade.

Kelly then took us to the secret road which contained the tombs of emperors and empresses of the Ming dynasty. Apparently according to Kelly the mountains surrounding the tombs were named in accordance to Feng Shui.


After that went had lunch and then went to....THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA (YAY!!!). Honestly I wasn't expecting much but in the end I was delighfully suprised. The wall itself is 8,700 km (crazy right?!) Even though the parts we saw were all reconstructions they were still pretty cool. The view and cool air was wonderful too. Such a majestic landmark, sadly its tarnished by its bloody history, our guide Kelly told us that 20% of the workers died and that when they did die they just continued to build on top of them. We also saw these giant magpies on the way up.

It was then time for dinner, which was Beijing style noodles. We then enjoyed Peking style opera with these teachers from an international school in Beijing. One of them was from New Jersey, another from the UK and another from Ukraine. They were all super nice and were fun to talk to. The opera itself was really fun too with the comedy sketches, face changing and acrobatics.

That's all for now!