Wow! I don’t even have words to describe how surreal today was. After waking up from a much needed night of sleep we went downstairs to breakfast and it was amazing! I had some fried rice for breakfast which was a little strange, but it was so good, I couldn’t resist. From there we took the bus and were on our way to The Great Wall of China! During the ride to the wall our tour guide, Uncle Joe provided a great deal of history about the wall which was super interesting to learn about. He also talked about the train rail that they are rapidly building which will provide a high speed train for the 2022 Olympic games that are coming to Beijing! Throughout the ride, Uncle Joe also shared some interesting facts about China as a whole; the boy to girl ratio in China is about 120 million boys to 100 millions girls, that is crazy! He said they are supposedly importing women from Vietnam to help balance out the population, I’m not sure if I believe that, though. As we arrived at the wall I was very surprised at how small it was from far away,  at first  I didn’t even realize we were there! After hopping off the boss, I had a very unique experience that I’ve never had before; I used a squatty potty! I don’t recommend. Then it was on to the hike up to The Great Wall. 89 long, grueling, flights of stairs later we made it to the wall. I was so exhausted by the time we got up there it took me a moment to catch my breath. But then it was immediately taken away again at the absolute beauty that surround me. It still hasn’t hit me that I walked the Great Wall of China today, it’s something that I never dreamed of doing and to have that experience was incredible. The way down the wall was a much more pleasant experience to say the least. We got to take a toboggan ride! With the exception of a few traffic jams we zipped right down the mountain. As we were walking away from the wall there were tons of vendors trying to sell us different types of souvenirs, some of them were really cool! They even had a Burger King, likely to satisfy all the American tourists. Following our breath taking hike we ate a delicious lunch! We were served about eight different dishes and they were all very yummy! We had rice, chicken and zucchini with some wort of sauce, fish, eggplant with sauce, and much more. From there, it was off to the Summer Palace. Not going to lie, I was pretty surprised by the Summer Palace, I imagined it to be much different than what it was. The summer palace was very spread out with a bunch of different structures with the worlds longest corridor to take us through it. It was beautiful, the structures were so colorful and they each had different writing on them. There was a huge boat made out of marble on the water but apparently it wasn’t about to actually move because it was so heavy, not surprising! It’s amazing that all this was build for just one person! To top off all the new experiences I had today, people everywhere were taking pictures of our tour group. One women even stopped a few of my friends and I and asked if she could get a picture with us. It was a very strange interaction! After the Summer Palace we all went as a group with Dr. Li to hot pot for dinner, this was something I’ve never even heard of before but it was so good! The walk there was a little sketchy but the inside of the restaurant was very authentic. The way hot pot works is they gave us a huge tub of boiling water and lots of different meats and vegetables to dip in the water to cook. After a few minutes the food was all done and we got to eat, it was amazing! 

That’s all for me today, I need to get some sleep! My body still has no idea what time it is.