Beijing: Featuring...The Great Wall of China

When I left off last time we had just gone to meet up with the Jacksons. Unfortunately, we forgot to take a picture together so I'm going to cheat and use another picture from a different visit.

On Sunday morning we woke up and had a delicious homemade breakfast with Gary and Danita before we went with them to visit their service. We really enjoyed meeting their friends and visiting with everyone at lunch afterward. We felt so warmly received. From there we went out to see the sights. Stop one was the Temple of Heaven.

Temple of Heaven

This is the temple where the Emperor would make sacrifices to the gods to ensure a good harvest.  It's in the middle of a huge park that had lots of beautiful flowering trees and bushes that were just starting to bloom. Beijing is a beautiful city.

A little Chinese Spring

Next we hit the Olympic Park.  It was fun to see the Bird's Nest in person. I would like to have seen the structures lit up at night, but we didn't feel like waiting, so we snapped a few pictures and headed on our merry way.

I had to hold my fleece behind the camera so we could open our eyes. It was very bright!

Aquatics Center.  goggles, obviously.

Since making the decision to move to Shanghai for a year we knew that we wouldn't be able to come back home without a trip to the Great Wall. How could we face our families? It would be humiliating.  So we reserved our last day in Beijing for our Great Wall hike. Nothing was on our agenda but climbing all those stairs and marveling at this monster of stone climbing the countryside.

One thing I did not anticipate was the absolute terror that came over me as I continued to climb higher and higher up the steps.  Yep, you heard me, I was petrified. You don't realize it before you're on it but those walls are very low, I assure you, you could fall right over the edge.

At times the steps are quite steep. We had our backpacks on because we were headed home when we left the wall, so the mix of feeling a little off balance, the tornado-force winds and being an overall scardey-cat made me more than a little anxious. Ok, I confess- there was some minor hyperventilating on my part, and yes I clutched those rails at every possible opportunity, but I made it.

The climb down, which I was thinking would be easy, was actually the trickiest part because of 1) our backpacks and 2) the crazy youths that were playing some sort of the Fast and the Furious game on foot, knocking over innocent bystanders as they ran all over the Wall in a frenzy.  This old lady would have shaken her fist at them if I'd been able to spare one from my death grips on the knee-height rail and Joel's hand, respectively.  I said everything I needed to say with my eyes. Miscreants.

Despite being fully convinced of my eminent death, I managed to have a delightful time. The views were beautiful everywhere you turned. Even in the winter before the grass and trees had all woken up it was a lovely thing to see the wall stretching and meandering across the horizon.

We gave the whole Beijing experience a big two thumbs up. Fun parting aside: You may remember from a previous post that we have been assigned minor celebrity status on occasion in Shanghai, but it's rare. It came as a surprise but in Beijing, we were quite a spectacle. It was a common to see people grab for their cell phones and take pictures of us or with us if they were bold enough to ask. It happened too many times to count: in Tienanmen, on the subway, in the Forbidden City, on the Wall, at local eateries for lunch, they couldn't get enough...and all I could think to myself was didn't you host the Olympics? Shouldn't you be over this by now? Not that I minded, of course.  The population everyone is worried about taking over the world get excited and sheepish when they run into me on the street. I think it's precious.