The New Year

Hey Kristen, how did you start off the new year?

Oh, ya know, just climbed The Great Wall of China.


Man! It was awesome! We went up New Years Day, leaving at 1pm instead of our intended 8am, whatever. We stumbled upon the long distance bus station, and basically guessed which bus we were supposed to take. After falling asleep on the bus, we were suddenly awoken an hour into the trip and forced to get off! Note: We were the only white people on the bus and the only people forced off. The driver said, "bus no go to great wall. get off here. my friend take you." Um, what??? Really though, it wasn't that surprising, given we're in China. So the rando guys (but not so rando b/c they are all obviously part of some half-legal organization) start giving us the infamous "friend price." I think you can really consider yourself a local when you know that the friend price is anything but what its name suggests. We yelled at them in our limited Chinese for trying to rip us off and walked away. As always, when you walk away, the friend price suddenly becomes more friendly. Finally, because we didn't know any other choice, we accepted their new offer to The Great Wall. After our driver pulled over and talked with his friends for awhile, went to the store, stopped by the bathroom, and pawned us off to four more drivers, we finally made it! We booked it to The Wall just so we could say that we started off 2011 by being on The Great Wall! It was well worth it. And the sunset was beautiful.

The hotel was interesting. I think it was more like this man's large house ie: monopoly. I could see my breath at night.

The next morning we left the hotel at 7:30am to catch the sunrise and the beginning of the day. We went to Jinshanling, which is one of the least-touristy areas of The Wall and one of the least restored, so most in original form. It was a-ma-zing. At times we were the only people on the The Wall for miles, and surrounded by a fish bowl of mountains where no civilization could be seen. It was so pretty and historic and really made you visualize the threat The Wall was to intruders. (Note: I really recommend this section of the wall to friends here in Beijing, or people familiar with China). It didn't have a bizillion tourists, food and souvenir stands, people hassling you to buy stuff. It seriously looked as if it might have in the very beginning.

COOL, RIGHT!?!?