I have now been to all three sections of the Great Wall!

This morning I woke up at 8am to go on the day trip to see the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall. The Great Wall is called ChangCheng 长城 in Chinese.


The CIEE bus left at 8:30am to go to the Great Wall. It was only a 2 hour drive. MUCH shorter than the drive to closest part of the wall that I went to with my parents!

When we got off the bus we had to walk for about 10 minutes, up hill, passing a lot of little shops, just to get to the stairs that you took to get to the Great Wall.

At the Mutianyu section you have the choice of taking a cable car or stairs up to the Great Wall. We all chose the stairs because we didn't realize how many we would actually have to take. I think after 500 stairs we finally reached the Great Wall. I had never been so out of breath in my life. I felt very pathetic! Especially when old chinese men and woman would speed right passed me.

The 500 stairs were definitely worth it though! This part of the Great Wall is absolutely gorgeous! I was completely taken back once I got up there. The scenery is something you have never seen before.

We all walked around and explored different parts of Mutianyu for about two hours. Then Heather, Mariel, Jiahua, Mike and I decided to take the Cable Car down. Lazy... I know. But we thought it would be really cool. And it was... it went extremely fast though!

We got back from the Great Wall around 3:30pm. Tonight two of our friends, Kameron and James put on this party at a club in Wudaokou called Global. A bunch of us went to Korean Barbeque first and then to Global.

Korean Barbeque is my new favorite place to go in Beijing! It is all you can eat and drink for 48kuai. Which is about $6.  It is buffet style. So you go up and get whatever you want- chicken, beef, little hot dogs, bread, vegetables, dumplings, bacon, etc....

I don't think I have ever eaten more in my life... which was probably good thing since I drank more beer and Maotai than I ever had before.

After Korean Barbeque we went to the FX Hotel to pre-game (as if we needed to do more of that) and then left for Global around 10.

Global was so much fun! We got two free beers. We did a lot of dancing and singing. I'm not sure how much I enjoy the club scene though. I definitely miss the PIKE house!

Around 1am, Heather and I left because we were really hungry and wanted McDonalds. When we got to McDonalds we realized neither one of us had any money. We left extremely upset... but thankfully we ran into Tom who was headed to McDonalds himself. He called himself the Bank of Tom and let us borrow money to get food! Those chicken nuggets and fries definitely saved my life.