Day 12 -- Beijing, China

I woke up at 6:00am this morning with the fear that we would oversleep. I then spent the next hour trying to fall asleep again, but no luck. By 7:00am I gave up the fight and took the opportunity to wash my hair and blow-dry it (way too cold to go out with it wet and it would never dry in this weather otherwise). We had breakfast at the hotel. There was a mix of both Western and Chinese food. I’m hoping for other people’s sake that they did a better job on the Chinese items then they did on the Western ones. Who knew that they could screw up on so much food in such mass quantities? The watery eggs were pretty bad and I’m not a big fan of Pork’n’Beans for breakfast. The croissants were about the only bearable food I found. We met our driver at 9:00am and drove for an hour to get to the Great Wall at Badaling. It has changed quite a bit since I was there last year. For those of you who have been there before, believe it or not, it is possible to make it more touristy. “Bear Park” is under construction; there are many ‘log cabin’ type buildings, fake trees, and big concrete pits that I think may actually host bears at some point. We bundled up, got out of the van, and got in the line to by entrance tickets. We stood there in the cold and wind, bundled up in multiple layers, stocking caps and hoods on, scarves over our faces, only our eyes peering out…and five minutes later we were back in the van. I managed to tell him that we wanted to go to “the other one” (meaning another spot on the wall down the road a little further). However, there are many ‘other ones’ and we had no way of really telling him which one. Dad tried writing the characters for ‘lower entrance’ (some of the few characters he knows) and he began to understand. Mom called Mi, her Chinese travel agent/ friend, and she explained where we wanted to go. As we pulled away, the driver said “Bye Bye Badaling” and we all had a good laugh. We drove for about ten to fifteen minutes and pulled up to the Great Wall at Juyongguan. The camel that was at Badaling (or perhaps a different camel?) is down here now. It was much warmer, less windy, and fewer people here then at Badaling, but still plenty cold. We spent about a bit more than an hour and climbed quite a ways, but we didn’t go as far as was possible. The walk on the wall was hard on the knees as the steps varied greatly in height, some being only two or three inches high and some as high as my knees. We met the driver at 12:00pm and went back to the hotel. Took a hot bath to sooth the knee and warm up again. We had complained to management several times that the thermostat wasn’t functioning properly in our room (it was uncomfortably hot), so we finally got switched to another room that was also bigger. It was much more comfortable. Left from there and went to McDonald’s on Wangfujing for lunch. Walked down the road and shopped for a while. There is a great toy store not too far from McD’s. I bought some Chinese flashcards (some character to pinyin and English and some picture to character, pinyin, and English). We also hit Starbucks so we could sit down and warm up. From there, we walked back the other way and down one the little vendor alley. The two Chinese Dolls (about four and a half or five feet tall) were still at the end of the alley by the Chopstick Shop, so I got another picture with them. We bought some trinkets and trash (such as musical Mao lighters) and also saw food vendors with scorpions, seahorses, roaches, and larvae of some sort on sticks, ready to deep fry in oil. We stopped by a bookstore and bought some books for my cousin Nanetta to use with Tai, the little boy she is coming to adopt in about four days. The books have colors, foods, animals, body parts, and everyday items. We figure that way she can help him learn English with the aid of the books and give him something colorful to look at. Finally headed back to the hotel and out of the cold. Decided we didn’t want to go out again, so we ordered food in and called it a night an hour later.