The Great Marty Gordon and George

Sorry, but I have actually gotten 1 day behind in writing these blogs. It was difficult to find time to write in Beijing, because each day lasted forever and was very exhausting. Were back in Nanjing for the last time and I’m going to try and catch up here.

Yesterday we went to The Great Wall of China. We woke up early to be sure and have enough time on the wall because it was also a 2 hour car ride from the hotel. Max’s dad arranged for us to have a driver and surprised Max with his favorite car, an Audi A8. So Max was pumped from the minute we saw our car and while Gordon George and I were just waking up, Max was picking his jaw off the ground to get in the car.

When we got to the Great Wall it was much more than you ever get to see in the pictures. The entrance and parking lot are like all tourist attractions, but the wall itself is more amazing than any post card can capture. When you first walk in, you go through a museum of the history of the wall before actually getting on it. At the entrance there is a giant plaque given by the New World Wonders, declaring the Great Wall to be one of the 7 wonders of the New World. You then walk out of the museum and all you can see is wall. The small portion that was open to walk on was probably 4 miles or so long, but only a tiny little part of the wall that actually is expanded throughout most of the country. The emperor who built most of the wall was Qin, the same guy that later built the terra cotta warriors. This crazy emperor used the work force of the entire country for many years to build the giant defense system. It was never finished even though the project was continued by the following emperors.

Unlucky for us, the one day that we get to see the Great Wall, it had rained the day before, so there was a very thick fog left over. We didn’t get the typical day at the Great Wall because normally it is scorching hot and clear skies where you can see the miles and miles of wall. The fog made it pretty bad for pictures, but it also made it great for walking. We honestly would probably not have walked the whole thing if it were really hot. But we had a nice cool fog that set a really cool atmosphere. Not being able to see 50 feet in front of you made it seem like a great day for the Mongols to attack. The fog made it really easy to imagine guarding your country thousands of years ago from horseback Mongolians trying to invade.

Now the wall itself was not what I expected. All the post card pictures you see with the aerial view of the wall bending around the top of the mountain is not really an aerial view at all. The wall is built with thousands or steps and extremely steep inclines so the aerial view you are seeing is just someone standing on the wall looking down at the rest of the wall. They are not on top of anything or standing on some ladder to get a better picture, they are just looking down the 45 degree slope that most of the wall is built on. So as you walk around the wall it’s not just a casual walk, it really is a hike. Most people don’t actually walk the whole thing, but watching the elderly women and children make the distance is good inspiration to keep going. When you first walk up the entrance you can go right or left. Initially we went to the left because there were less people that way. We walked that whole side until the blocked door prevented tourists from further exploration and we turned back to try the other side. Walking back we passed the entrance and took off on the more crowded side until we made it to the other blocked off end. At that end there was a staircase to the base of the wall and the walk back to the car was along the bottom of the wall. The whole scene was really cool, but the fog played a pretty big role on the overall atmosphere of the day. It would have been nice to see the typical views and get the typical pictures, but it was really cool to have the battle scene fog on the stage all day. The thing though that I’m never going to get used to is the fact that we can go to the Great Wall of China, where there are thousands of people from all over the world flying in everyday to see one of the 7 wonders of the new world, and people were getting just as excited to take pictures of us instead of the wall. It was amazing how many people took pictures with Gordon George and I, and especially seeing how happy it made them. So I don’t really know how I feel about it, but my most shocking and amazing thing about the great wall was really the great Marty Gordon and George.

After we left the great wall we got dropped off at the water cube and birds nest where the 2008 Beijing Olympics were held. The square they are in is really big and a lot of people still visit to see the stadiums. We walked around and took some pictures outside, but to take a tour of the inside is pretty boring because all you can see now is the empty seats. Sometimes they still use the building for big events like concerts and things, but only the best of the best get to perform there. The buildings themselves were much cooler and much bigger than they seemed on TV. The water cube is actually being renovated to be more open to the public. They are taking out like 70% of the seating and putting in a water park.

Leaving the birds nest and water cube we went back to the hotel and hung out for a minute, showering and getting ready for dinner. We didn’t have any big plan for dinner, so we were just going to walk around and find a nice place to eat. We ended up going back to this really nice area of Beijing, called the Village, where we found this nice little pub that actually served hamburgers. We had gotten there pretty late for dinner, but before the night crowd had begun to walk around so we had a nice, much needed, cheeseburger for the first time. By the time we were done eating it was about 10pm and had started to rain pretty hard. We decided that because the world cup final was coming on at 2:30 we could either go back to the hotel and go to bed, or stay there pretty much all night to watch the game. With the verdict of, it’s the world cup finals, were in china, and we don’t have to wake up early tomorrow, we decided to stay up and watch the game. Since we were there so early, we had the best table in the place to watch the game. When it got a little later the bar ended up packing out and it was completely filled with Netherlands fans. We met a few people from Yale, Brown, and Duke who were on a study abroad trip and they ended up watching the game with us. The game itself as you know if you watched, was pretty boring, but it was really cool to be watching in the bar with all those people from different parts of the world.

By the time we made it back to the hotel it was already sunny out. Luckily we didn’t have a whole lot planned for that day so we slept until we had to check out of the hotel. Before our flight out we decided to go back to Tian’ Anmen square to hang out and take pictures. We ended up chilling in the square just sitting around near the giant picture of Mao. The hundreds of guards walking around as well as the many more cameras gave us a great sense of security while we were hanging out.

When we left Tian’ anmen square we went back to the hotel and caught our flight back to Nanjing. When we got back to the house we just went straight to bed and are hanging out all day today.

Sorry there were a few days of absence with these blogs. I hope no one was worried, we have just been really busy, and finding even a few minutes to write is more rare than a solid poop. I had to throw that in there, cause what’s a good blog without the mention of poop. Anyways I hope every one is still reading and still enjoying. Be sure to keep checking out the pictures on www.flikr.com/photos/martyprevitte and we will see you at home in less than a week.

Marty