Pictures!!

So, the Great Wall was really impressive. We went to the wall on a tour with our hostel. We had a Chinese tour guide who spoke really good english. She took us to the Mutianyu section of the wall. It is the newest section, from the Ming dynasty. We took a chair lift (so scary, held on super tight, but I made it!) up the mountain to get to the wall. We walked from Tower 6 to Tower 11. It was so cool seeing the towers where the guards used to live. We took tons of pictures of the wall and all of the stairs. Sadly, none of the pictures do it justice. All of the stairs were at different heights and were just a little bit slippery. After we were done on the wall we took a toboggan down the mountain! It was pretty cool, definitely better than walking.

After the wall, we went and had lunch with our tour group. Our restaurant was named "Mr. Yang's" and was pretty good. We had 11 dishes and ate family style.

Then we got back on the bus and had our 100 minute trip back to Beijing. Our driver was crazy! He kept weaving in and out of traffic, passing on the shoulder and in oncoming traffic, using his horn constantly, and getting so close to other cars. But, we survived. It was definitely a fun trip. We met other people on the tour: 2 girls from England, boy from Holland, boy from England, girl from Canada, girl from Japan, mother & daughter from Madrid.

After the Great Wall we came back to the hostel. We intended to nap for an hour and then go to the night market. That didn't work out as planned, we just woke up at 4 am. Guess we were more tired than expected.

That's all for now. I'm going to try and go back to sleep for a little bit. Then we are off to the Forbidden City & Temple of Heaven. We are going to eat baotzi (steamed buns with meat inside) for breakfast & I am super excited!!

Here is our picture site for the year: http://nanjingren.shutterfly.com/ I haven't added Great Wall pictures yet, my computer is about to die. But I will soon.