I am so glad we got to hike the wall on Saturday because the weather was PERFECT. It's quite hard to find a blue-sky day here with the smog, so we got really lucky. For example, the picture above was from the first day and the one below is from the second day. Big difference!
At the resort, there's a damn right next to the great wall. We got to repel down it (42 meters), which I have never done before. It was fun but scary, everyone in groups 3 and 4 did it, even though several people were really nervous. Looking at this picture, we repelled down the left side. Notice the wall is literally right next to it! Too cool.
We got put in an awesome group- we were definitely the best, let's be honest. But seriously, it was a great group of people and we were really excited to get to know some other people on the program. It seems as though this study abroad program has consisted of adventures that require you to intensely bond with other people. We spent three days together, no showering, re-wearing clothes that we hiked and sweat in, and basically looking our worst. It was a prime bonding experience.
We hired a company from Beijing to take us on the hikes. We had a guy named Mr. Wong and a girl named Athena. They were the coolest people ever. We found out Mr. Wong is the #1 rock climber in Tianjin...? Yeah, he was awesome. And Athena was the greatest; when Kat and I hugged her goodbye she broke down in tears. Like I said, it was a lot of bonding in just three days.
Apparently, Mr. Wong (being the badass that he is) took us on a more difficult hike along the wall than all the other groups. The other groups went around a section of the wall that went over a steep mountain, and we just kept on going and climbed the mountain... Cory and Alyssa- to put it in perspective, a lot of parts were more difficult than hiking the 14ers we did but we weren't that high so we could breathe okay and we only hiked for about 3-4 hours instead of 5-6! I think a 14er is more difficult overall, but this was definitely much harder than anyone led us to believe it would be. We were on all fours, climbing almost vertically next to broken parts of the wall. It was pretty ridiculous I'm not going to lie. Kat and I stayed in the front with the guide so we wouldn't get left behind and at multiple points we were practically running up the mountain haha. It was really hard but I am so glad we did it. It was a lot of fun. I will say, if I hadn't worn my hiking boots I would have broken my ankle. That was one crazy trail.
I think I ate more this weekend than I have in the past two weeks I have been in China combined. The villages had fresh grown vegetables and everything was so delicious. We realized the food at the cafeterias on campus are pretty much all MSG, so it was nice to eat something that actually filled you up and tasted good.
The CRC employees that flew here from ATL to run the program were interesting. They were both incredibly enthusiastic, but at times it was a bit much. I think the biggest issue was that all of us were pretty much dropped in the middle of China and our program directors were like 'ready, go!', so we've become pretty self-sufficient and independent over the last two weeks. We had the woman leader, named Laura, and I think she was frustrated because we weren't as cooperative as she had hoped. She planned a lot of 'team bonding' activities and other things along those lines, and honestly it felt like middle school again. We tried to be good sports about it, but sometimes we were just so exhausted from hiking we couldn't believe we were doing a game to teach us 'communication' and 'leadership'. Anyway, it made for an entertaining trip and although I think she somewhat hated us, we had a good time.
On the last day, we did a 'challenge hike' with everyone. It was optional but everyone decided to do it this year. We basically went to about 4 towers along a pretty steep section of the wall, and then came back down the other side. It was actually significantly easier than the parts Mr. Wong had us do on Saturday! It was cool having everyone there, we took pictures with a GT flag the graduate assistant brought and everything. Then, they had us do a raft building activity at the same damn we repelled down; we had to get everyone in our group on the raft (8 people), then paddle across the river and back. We were given string, bamboo, and four large buoyant barrels. For whatever reason, all the guides love our group and came to help us a lot. They were teaching us new knots, helping us decide how to design the raft, and even broke the rules to get us more ropes when we needed it. Mr. Wong ended up building 90% of our raft haha he loves us. The guide told us that generally speaking about 9/10 people get really wet during this activity. One groups raft completely fell apart, they all fell in the water, the other two kept theirs together but couldn't quite balance well enough to move quickly. My group won...of course. We owe it to Mr. Wong. I didn't get a single drop of water on me besides my feet. Thank goodness, who knows what was in that water.
That's all for that trip I think. Next weekend we are planning on going to Beijing and we want a big group of 20+ people to go. Should be a good time.
P.S. Cory- I am glad you never forced me to go camping last summer. I made it through the weekend, but I am now very sure that camping is just not my thing.
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