Thursday, March 16th

Today was defiantly one of the more anticipated days of our trip. We were all well aware that today we were going to see the Great Wall of China.

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During the hour or so drive there... I was still trying to wrap my head around it. I am ACTUALLY going to see, step on, and climb THE Great Wall of China. The wall of walls. Humpty Dumpty would be in shame to this wall!

A quick side topic... on the way driving there I saw this chinese graffiti which I found really cool. I can barely understand American graffiti, so I have no idea what this says... but it's still interesting to know that other cultures have graffiti also... I don't know why they wouldn't but... whatever. It looks cool.

Anyways... back to THE Great Wall. We finally took a slight turn around a mountain... and there it was. Right in front of me. It was actually sort of weird... I mean, I was just looking at a big wall. But the knowledge of it's size, it's history, and its significance... made it that much more amazing. The fact that I could now tell my family, my college friends, my co-workers, my wife... that I have been on the Great Wall. It's something special.

The Great wall is over 5,500 miles long, and took around 2,000 years to build. Can you imagine our government starting a project like this today? Saying "Don't worry... we will finish it in a couple thousand years......."

The one thing we figured out very quickly is that the Great Wall is no leisurely walk through the park. If you have seen the new "Karate Kid" movie there is a scene where he is running across the Great Wall. Now I know why! Running across the Great Wall is possibly one of the best work outs you could get. It gets steep.

We all managed to take a group picture at one of the towers:

When I got to the end of the line, I realized how much the Chinese government had actually restored. The pile of rubble you see in the distance there is what the Great Wall would actually look like if not restored.

I gave my top-notch zen pose for the camera:

The Wall provides quite the spectacular view.

A panoramic of the Great Wall:

After absorbing all of the glory the Great Wall could offer us in a matter of a few hours, we headed back onto the bus. Next we were headed to a jade factory located a few hours away. Jade is the most highly respected gem in China. It is a huge part of their culture and that is why we went to this factory... to see exactly how much work goes in to making such incredible bracelets, earrings , and small figures. Never mind statues, like this one:

We were shown exactly how it all starts, as they slowly chisel away at it....

...Until it turns into something beautiful.

And if you have several hundreds of thousands of dollars laying around... you might be interested in buying this nice figure.

After the Jade factory we went to a big chinese grocery store and stocked up on snacks to help submerge ourselves in the chinese culture. Yay chinese junk food!

By that time it was getting late and we headed to the Beijing train station to take an overnight train to Xi'an! The Chinese people use the train system much more then we do, so even though traveling by train is considered a "lower-class" form of transportation, the train station looked like a massive palace:

After waiting about twenty minutes to board our train, we were able to move into our rooms of four beds – two bunk beds. The rooms were a little cramped, and moving around was not the easiest. But again, this was considered a "lower-class" form of transportation.

"Clikity-clak, clikity-clak..." the train would go. This was at first annoying and prevented me from getting to sleep, but it slowly turned into my lullaby. We slowly fell asleep in our small beds as the train rolled on for 13 hours, slowly working itself towards the city of Xi'an, a city famous for the discovery of the Terra-cotta Warriors. Saying our farewells to Beijing, we moved on to the more great adventures that lay ahead of us.