So I’m in China. Yeah that’s still crazy. I started off day 1 as a victim of jet lag, waking up at 2:30 AM and not being able to fall asleep again until 5. At least my friends back home were up (but don’t tell China that I have a VPN). Nevertheless, I woke up again a few hours later feeling relatively refreshed and ready to go. I threw on my signature lemon shirt and met everyone in the hotel lobby, where we met our tour guide for Beijing, Uncle Joe. Joe filled up the somewhat lengthy bus ride to the Wall with some fun facts and stories about China, like how the city of Beijing is roughly the size of the entire state of New Jersey (which is wild). So we finally arrived at Great Wall, except the Wall itself is at the top of a mountain, so we were presented with two options: take the stairs or the chair lift to the top. Wanting the most authentic experience, almost everyone opted for the stairs. Now, I’m not saying that it was an entirely bad experience, but I probably wouldn’t choose to make that climb again. After a lot of sweating and plenty of breaks, I reached the peak (where there was a food stand advertising hot coffee and pancakes for some reason). It was actually hard to believe I was really standing on the Great Wall of China and that I was quite literally on the opposite side of the world. Immediately after setting off down the wall, I became painfully aware of the unusually small and uneven steps underfoot that made navigating downhill slopes especially tricky. I quickly learned to step carefully after almost taking a tumble in my haste to explore. Once I collected myself, the photo shoot began (because you have to flex on the ‘gram). Ignoring my mom’s voice in my head yelling at me, I jumped up on the side of the wall for an epic shot with the breathtaking mountains in the background and even hit the classic Karate Kid crane pose (reminiscent of the 2012 Jaden Smith/Jackie Chan remake of course).

I really could have spent hours on up there. Really, I would love to have the opportunity to take a backpacking trip entirely on the wall, but unfortunately we did have to leave eventually. I wasn’t disappointed for long, however, because the way back to the bottom consisted of a toboggan run down the mountain on small, sit-on-top carts. I guess there aren’t many safety regulations in China because we definitely could have easily been launched off of the track if we went fast enough. To our disappointment, though, we all got stuck behind a very slow group, so we weren’t able to do anything too dangerous. Next on the agenda was a group lunch, which was absolutely amazing even though I didn’t always know what I was eating (but that’s the fun part). I was still a little shaky in my chopstick skills, but that didn’t stop me from stuffing myself with every dish on the table, including some trout which was probably the best fish I’ve ever had. Our next stop was the Summer Palace, whose name is pretty self-explanatory. It was here that we really got our first experience with having random people take our picture. As we walked through the beautiful palace listening to Joe’s stories, I could see someone unabashedly holding their phone up at all times. We embraced it though, posing by ourselves and even with some older women. The Palace itself was an incredibly beautiful and tranquil place. The highlight for me was the Long Corridor, an open-air walkway next to a large lake which is the longest continuous corridor in the world (728m). The cool part about it was that the entire length was covered in paintings of scenes from around China that the emperor would witness during his travels.

And thus concluded the official activities of the first day of our adventure. We returned to the hotel for some rest and relaxation before, as per Dr. Li’s recommendation, going out as a whole group for hotpot, where you cook pieces of meat in a pot of boiling water in the middle of the table. We trusted Nancy and Jane (our Asia Institute program coordinators) as they led us through small back streets of Beijing before arriving at the nondescript building which was the restaurant. I was actually surprised because I don’t think anyone even burned themselves in the process of fishing for food in the bubbling water. After a great meal, trudged back to the hotel, exhausted from both the jet lag and a long, physically demanding day. I’m pretty sure I fell asleep as soon as my head touched the pillow, maybe even sooner.