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May 14, 2009
Thursday
Authored by John
Thursday, we woke up nice and early to take our trip to the Great Wall of China!! We met at 8 to take a bus to one of the great wonders of the world. It took about an hour to reach our destination, and it was one of our first opportunities to see the rural landscape in China. After about 20 minutes of driving, all you see is open land and TONS of power lines. We went past a few poor villages and ended up at the bottom of a mountain where the Great Wall was situated. We started walking up and heard the many hagglers at the stores bartering for shirts, chop-sticks, and many of the other random items which are typically the same, but sold by different vendors. After finally getting past them, we started our ascent of the mountain up many flights of stairs.
Professor Brad told us that it would take 25-30 minutes to reach the wall. JM and I took that as a challenge, telling him that we could make it in under 15 minutes. I am unsure why we do these things to ourselves, but we started running up literally huge stone steps. That lasted for a minute or two. The steps seemed to get steeper and steeper as we climbed. There were a few places of relative flatness, but overall it was an uphill battle. Well, we made it to the wall in 10 minutes, and it took another 10 minutes to make it to the nearest peak. We met the people who took the chair lift to the top (ha.ha.) and they described us as the two who just got inside after a downpour. We were soaked. But we made it. The view was unbelievable, the magnitude of the wall was unthinkable, and the history behind the wall made us speechless as we stood at the top. However, the precious moments of serenity and peace were quickly put aside as we trekked to find out where the luge to go down the Great Wall was located.
It took about an hour or so to reach the luge. Now let me try to explain the luge in a few adjectives: Long, unsafe, fast, unique, and FUN AS SHIT! haha basically you sit on a toboggan and ride down on a metal track, but you have no safety net. You control your speed using a lever situated inbetween your legs, and when you turn, the side walls are higher (similar to a water slide). Basically, we flew down the mountain, and took the chairlift up to do it again. The second time, our group had caught up with us, so we all went right after one another, which was really funny. We would bump into one another (sometimes on purpose) and Tiffany, a girl on the trip, got knocked off the track because Andrew hit her from behind! It was really funny - slightly dangerous - but it was mostly her fault for going too slow.... :)
Anyway, we left the Great Wall at about 12-1:00 after making a few purchases on the street. JM and I got these shirts that we wanted earlier for 15 yuan! (about $2 US) We - well mostly he - had been trying every place possible for this price. So we got back to the bus, and saw all the other things people got. One girl, Ariel, bought a shirt for 15 yuan as well. Thought it was a great deal.. until she realized that it looked like it had been faded from the sun and smeared with dirt. When she tried to return it, the vendor said "15 dirty, 20 clean!" Needless to say, the quality of goods sold by these vendors is a slight concern.
We then went to the Olympic Village! It was a little rainy, but we got to see the Birds Nest and Water Cube up close and personal. They are unbelievable works of art and the entire Olympic Village was very cool. We opted out of paying 50 yuan for entrance into the Birds Nest (to see a field and bleachers?) and would have gone inside the Water Cube for 40 yuan but we got detached from the group when trying to take a picture and ended up not being able to go. Instead, we looked over to see a kid pooping next to a tree in front of everyone. The children literally don't wear diapers, take shits in front of everyone through the slit in their pants, and no one seems to mind. We were a little grossed out but managed to run back in the rain. We also stopped to jump through the fountains (similar to Disney World), and ended up being the only two to run through them... all the Chinese just sat on the outside and watched. We got a few picture requests though so it was kinda funny.
Our next destination was called the Tea House, but judging the appearance of our three tables at the end of the performance, you could have mistaken it for the beer house. Basically, we had a performance of a Chinese Opera (which is very weird - two men play a man and a woman, and let's just say we didn't figure that out until the end of the performance). They also had a magic show where Anoop went onstage and participated in the fun. It was really funny because we were yelling for him the whole time.. we were pretty obnoxious throughout the performance. They also had some Kung Fu masters who did a show as well. Anyway, we ended up ordering a few rounds of beers and had a good head start on the night when we went out to a recommended bar - Coco Banana.
Before I talk about the club, I must talk about our bus rides. JM has a plethora of jokes at his disposal for some reason. He attributes this hidden talent to long nights at certain camps throughout the years - possibly a band camp, I am unsure. Anyway, there are several funny, but often dirty, jokes which he told to the back of the bus on the way to and from the Great Wall and Olympic Village. They were more like stories, and he absolutely loves telling them. Anyway, Brad was not with us when we went to the Tea House, only June (our tour guide). Therefore, I grabbed the microphone and said, yo lets have story time on the bus. So we are both at the front of the bus, and he starts telling these jokes. I add in occasional supporting details I have picked up throughout the day and other suggestions to make the joke more ridiculous than it already is. It was hilarious and everyone loved it until June dropped us off close enough to get a cheap taxi to Coco Banana.
Though we thought we went to Coco Banana, we actually went to the bar attached to it, Babyface Banana. We don't really understand their attraction to the name Banana, but they seem to like it (we went to GT Banana last weekend). We bought a few bottles and the night turned into a funny mess when we met some Miami of Ohio students. Let's just say I had a dance contest with a few of them and it was just ridiculous. The venue was a lot smaller than some of the other clubs we have gone to, but it was a lot of fun since the majority of our group went there. We left at about 1:00 or so and took a taxi home. One note worth mentioning was that one student got in the habit of taking alcohol bottles from tables without paying for them, a habit which caused some trouble in Xi'an on Saturday...
Posted by jfavorit at May 14, 2009 12:17 AM