The Great Wall of China... And Cinderella's Band

            In the morning Liz, Josh and I planned to pick Morgan up at his hostel and drive the see the Great Wall of China.  We weren’t sure where to hire a driver and the people at the hostel didn’t seem to know so we went to the fancy hotel next door and talked to the front desk.  In fifteen minutes they had a driver pick us up and take us to Morgan’s hostel.  We weren’t able to stop for breakfast so we bought some Oreos and waters and had them in the car.

            The driver was pretty happy and smiling, but he didn’t know much English so we could speak to him very much.  He dropped us as the end of the walking street where Morgan’s hostel was so we could walk down to meet him.  He was pretty easy to find, being one of the few 6’4 red heads in Beijing, so we were off towards the Wall pretty quickly.

            I think I was the only one who was awake for the drive to the wall.  The driver stopped the car and started walking.  We weren’t positive of what was happening, but we were walking towards the Great Wall, so that was good.  He took us to a place to buy tickets and told us to come back by 3pm.  He would wait for us in the tea shop across the road.

            We took ski lifts to the top of the Great Wall of China.  I never thought I would say that, but it’s true.  We walked around for a while taking pictures and looking around.  I called a few people from the top, which was pretty cool.  We spent hours just walking around on the top of the Wall.  It was really beautiful and interesting because the bricks were not even at all.  At one point the entire top of the Wall was slanted and at another the steps her higher than my knees and I had to almost crawl to climb up.

            We had to get back by 3pm, so we got in the long line to ride toboggans to the bottom of the Wall.  That was something else I never thought I would say.  The toboggan ride was fun.  We had to stand in line for about an hour before we could go, though.  Then they kept telling me to slow down and put away my camera.  They must have thought I was some kind of reckless driver or something.  I don’t know where they got that idea from.

            We ate at a street restaurant at bottom of the Wall.  I have Kung Pao chicken, which was pretty good.  Then we found our driver and headed back to the hostel.  It was 5pm when we got back to our hostel.  Morgan took the subway to get back to his hostel and Josh, Liz and I had to figure out what to do with the rest of the day.  We decided to watch TV and eat snacks.  Chinese TV is fascinating.  At first there seemed to be people singing on at least half of the channels.  Then we found a movie to watch.  I don’t know what exactly was happening since it wasn’t in English, but it seemed like some kind of X-Men/Cinderella/Harry Potter/That Thing You do/Batman/Sailor Moon cross over.  From what I could tell Cinderella and her band mates were superheroes with special powers that allowed them to turn into a butterfly tattoo on the back of some guys neck so they could go inside of him and clean out his heart…  Then they literally pulled on his heart strings and gave him amnesia.  Then everything seemed to be alright again.  Anyway, I was expecting that to give me some weird dreams, but it didn’t.  Too bad I don’t have any interesting dreams to write about this time.  Oh well!