Running on the Great Chinese Wall

Our class went on a trip to the great wall today. Seeing as we are currently in China, and Chinese people don't get the concept of weekend, Eilin and I had to get up at 07.00 on a Saturday in order to catch the bus that left from school at 08.30.

As the bus left so early everybody but me and a guy who got a really good idea about something that he had to write down(!) slept the entire way there. The destination was, of course, the exact same site as I visited last time I saw the great wall.

We had all actually hoped for rain today as that would have been less hot and would have also meant less other visitors, but no, we weren't that lucky.

Thinking that I haven't worked out in about a month I chose to walk up to the wall instead of riding the cable car. I kind of hated myself for the next thirty minutes. I think as we climbed the steep stairs in 38 C degrees for thirty minutes we all kind of hated ourselves. Not only was it hot and the stairs were steep, they were also filled with whiny Chinese girls (Chinese girls can not sweat, so they always walk veeeeery slowly and whine a lot, the exception is one of our student contacts who will even help push the wheelchair one of the girls in our class have to use) and even whinier American tourists who had never before walked further than 200 meters at once. Oh. My. God. At least we got to feel extremely sporty...

When we reached the top (twenty minutes before our other, very whiny, student contact) we were told we had to go to the top in one end of that part of the wall (only parts of the wall is open to visitors), only to discover when we reached it that we could take the boggy-thingie* down if we wanted to. Which was of course situated at the other end of that part of the wall. And that we had to be down again in an hour. The Chinese student contact claimed it would take us an hour just to get there (of course), but we chose not believe her. It took us less than half an hour, and yes, we walked fast, but still.

After that we ate and drove back to Beijing. That time even I slept.