Saturday's Adventure to the Wall....
Today was an amazing eye-opening day! For starters, us four guys didn't get lost (I haven't seen what anybody else has written, but Andy, KC, Austin and I live in an apartment about 1.5 miles from where the others are staying at…just ask me or somebody about us getting lost…it's a great story) on our way into town…but that's probably because a bus came and picked us up at our apartment to meet up with the rest of the team. Anyways…we all hopped onto a bus and had about a 2 hour bus ride to get to the Great Wall. There are some interesting stories that happened on that bus, but the only thing I can say is that we found out that Luke now has a little "girlfriend" over here! :)
Then we finally got to the base of the mountain on which the Great Wall sits atop. This is one thing I never really thought about, but I didn't even realize that it sat on top of a mountain, and it got me (and Melissa who I was sitting next to on the chair lift up there) to thinking…how did all of those guys carry all of those stones to the top of this mountain to build this few thousand mile long wall?!?! That would have taken forever! It's absolutely amazing what people could build way back then…and have it build so well. One of my favorite parts of my day (as well as on the trip so far…not to take away from all of the other amazing things we've experienced so far) was on the ride up the mountain, it got to a point where you were just sitting in this ski lift seat, and it was completely silent with a light cool breeze blowing in your face; it was one of the most peaceful moments in my entire life! So then we were finally on the Great Wall! Some of us took the trip down the wall that lead to a place that was a part of the original wall (3 of the others took the other direction, but I'm not really sure of their experience…it was KC, Austin, and Kaleb, so you'll have to ask them about it). Anyways, the way we went, some of the wall hadn't been refurbished or anything, and that was pretty cool. The only thing was that we had to take tons and tons of stairs, and many of them were at very steep inclines. Needless to say, many of us got a great work out for the day :)
Then it came time to head back down the mountain…and this is probably just as cool as seeing the wall itself. We got on these little carts, and got to ride them on this huge metal slide all the way down the mountain! It kind of reminded me of bobsledding, but without the ice…and also, you were the only one on the cart, not 4 people…oh, and you didn't have to wear helmets, and you had to keep slowing down a lot because of slow people in front of you…so when I really stop to think about it, it's not really even much like bobsledding at all besides the going down the mountain on a track, lol :)
After we all got back down we got to go to this nice restaurant and eat some pretty good food. A lot of the people really enjoyed the "strawberry cotton-candy pears" that we had for dessert (we actually think it was little asian pears in watermelon juice, but we liked our name for it better.)
Following that we got to go to an International Church in Beijing. It was a really great experience and a really great sermon to hear.
Then we went supper at an American Bar and Grill (I know…you shouldn't be eating American food while you are here because you may never get to go back, but I didn't care, because most of the group was headed there too.) I had a bacon cheeseburger with bbq sauce and onion rings on it, and it was a really good burger, and I believe I saw somebody else get a pizza there as well :)
That pretty much concluded what we did for the day besides the trip back to our place, except for the great conversation that I had with one of my team members. Overall, it was pretty much an amazing day that really wore most, if not all, of us out, but soo worth the great experiences that we all had! :)
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