长城又大又漂亮！

Since I've moved into another chapter of my life (the Chinese chapter), I feel that it is only appropriate that I also move my journal entries to a new server. And also because blogger just looks so much nicer.

So to recap on all that has happened since the last time I left off:
-Great Wall
-Chinese Acrobats
-Beijing Nightlife

Great Wall
The Great Wall of China was nothing like I imagined it would be. I was not looking forward to
going to the Great Wall on my one day off because I figured it would be the typical tourist attraction where you just walk around listening to someone lecture you on the history of whatever you are looking at. But to my surprise, it is something entirely different. Firstly, there is a reason why its called the Great Wall. It is an accomplishment just hiking up to that freakin wall. It took us about half an hour and about a million steep steps to finally reach the wall. People were panting and sweating and crying. It was terrible. We were not warned and many did not make it past the tenth step.

Lucky for me, I did :D When I finally reached the top and saw stretches and stretches of brick wall, I couldnt help but be in awe. It really is an incredible achievement for the builders of the wall. The wall is built on top of steep mountain tops and mountain sides and its almost impossible to imagine that people actually hauled the bricks up these mountains!

The funny thing is, you still have to do so much work when you are walking along the wall. The wall is made up of steps and more steps and MORE steps. Steps of different sizes, shapes, and colors. And you never know whether its going to be a big step or small step. So its an adventure walking along the wall. And because all our minds were so preoccupied with climbing these steps, we were never bored. The Great Wall is actually really fun!

Oh but the best part of the Great Wall is the slide that we get to use to go down the mountain. For 41 yuan, you could take a sled down a steel half-pipe. It is soooo much fun! Made climbing that monster all worth it! I mean, how many times have you wished that they would build a slide for peole to slide down the mountain instead of climbing back down. The Chinese are true geniuses!











Chinese Acrobatic Show
I was so happy when the coordinators announced a surprise outting to watch a Chinese Acrobatic show. This program is really intensive and so we spend most of our days teaching, studying in chinese class, and then planning lessons and studying again. But to finally have an excuse to do something else in the eveningw as great!

The show was awesome because all the performers were little kids who could do really amazing things like juggle a million balls, while doing flips, riding a bike, singing, and reciting proverbs. Too bad I couldnt get much footage. The usher kept crossing her arms to tell me "no cameras."

I got some pictures though :)



Beijing Nightlife
By far one of the most random and entertaining things I've done in Beijing is going to a club. This was right after our acrobatic show and every felt really energetic and most were drunk from drinking at the show. So we decided to go to the bar next to our hotel. It was fun but also soooo weird!

So firstly, the bar has a center stage for people to dance. And so when we arrived there was a middle-aged man dancing. With him were a couple of young Chinese girls (they were not dancing with the man though. In fact, it looked like they were avoiding him). Around the stage is a counter with these awesome seats. Have you ever been to a playground with those rocking horses? The seats at this bar/club were basically leather saddles on steel springs so that you could bounce and rock back and forth. It was great!

And so we go dancing. The funny thing is that guys usually dance with guys at the club. Most likely because the girls don't want to dance with guys. So a bunch of like 28-30 year men kept asking the guys to dance with them. But the dancing style in China is completely different than the dancing in America. Our dancing mimicks sexual acts. Chinese dancing is all about bouncing around, waving you arms, and just dancing to the music. Very clean and very playful. And so its not weird for men to dance with men because there is nothing sexual associated with dancing.

But the most random part was when they kicked us off stage. The reason was because they were going to start the "show." The first act was typical. A woman dressed fairly provocatively came out and sang some songs. Then it got weird. The second act was a teenager playing the violin. A violin at the club??? haha it was entertaining. Then the third act was a boxer. Basically, people coudl go up and sock him and he wouldn't hit back. It was great watching everyone try to sock this guy. And the last act, which i believe was the main attraction, was a burlesque show. that, surprisingly, was the most normal act of the night. Us perverted Americans are just too use to strippers.