The Wall, Mr. Wu and the Brazilians

Wow..we saw the Great Wall yesterday...awesome experience, a dream come true for both of us! Mr. Wu, as per the aforementioned blogs, arranged a trip for us to the Great Wall and along with us came 2 lovely fellows from Brazil, Alex and Jose so there were just the 5 of us climbing the Wall at a place other than Badaling which is the touristy place that all others are shuffled off to. We climbed 1100 steps and then witnessed the most amazing spectacle (probably why it's the first man-made wonder of the world). Afterwards we went to Beijing's foremost university clinic and had a lecture on Chinese medicine, we also got back massages and foot massages (reflexology) the four of us sitting on a couch with young folks going at our feet like mad. It's all pretty much free (tipping encouraged) but the hard sell comes with selling the herbal medicines and creams and foot soak powders. Very interesting.

The night before we went to the Chinese acrobat show - omygod - I hurt just watching them contort themselves into positions that if not illegal, must be against the laws of nature! As for life daily, being foreigners, we are paying more for everything and the language barrier makes us work soooo hard to get anything done. Beijing is so big our necks hurt from looking up at the hotels and buildings and as we are all aware, the building up of the city is tremendous, cranes and construction everywhere preparing for the 2008 olympics.

Tomorrow we are off to travel the Silk Road starting at a place called Datong and then on from there. We booked train tickets this morning which took us a very long time as the girl ticketed us wrong twice and then to another place to get a room booked. We are using our friend, Alex's computer to post this blog as we can't get in from any Chinese internet - I can't decipher any of the characters and if you don't have a Chinese address written down, you're hooped. Ok, gotta go. More from the road.