Part 1



We were truly blessed as it was very cold outside today in the shade--10 to 15 degrees--but only about 25-30 degrees in the sun and with each of us wearing 4 layers we were warm enough as we hiked the Great Wall. There was no wind at all and the sky was a brilliant blue with no haze like we had in Guangzhou or Wuhan, so we couldn't have asked for a better day. The plan was for our day to only be a half-day tour, but with little ones and Alyssa plodding along not feeling well, hiking the wall took more time than our guide planned for. He was very sweet, however, and didn't push us and we ended
up spending three hours there before we left even though he originally told us we would be there about an hour.

Micheline got tired quickly and said "China is stupid" and "I hate this wall" in between throwing ice and snow off the wall and laughing at the Slinky we brought as we tried to make it go down stairs. Others, including the vendors that positioned themselves up on the wall itself got a kick out of it. Unfortunately, however, most of the steps were too wide for the Slinky to really go down. It fared much better along the smooth spots that just sloped downhill.




Micheline actually did amazingly well over all for a six year old, although Jeff put her on his shoulders for most of the way back. I am glad we have done so much walking over the past 10 days as I didn't even get tired when we climbed up some of the steeper sections of the wall. Of course there were even steeper sections than what we went on, but we didn't get that far.

continued...