Camping at the Great Wall? Check.

So Allie and I met up with Meg and we three took the 4 o'clock bus to the Great Wall. At the front of the bus is this crazy muscle man, dressed in form fitting black spandex with a crazy Norwegian accent (he had blond, blond hair and blue eyes, if you're wondering) and it turns out that he's, more or less, our group leader...

And he starts to tell us that the part of the wall that we are going to is not a public part, so we need to be quiet getting up there... And to be careful where you go because once he was run down by Chinese soldiers, kicked in the head, covered with a black mask and taken into interrogation for nine hours. Immediately, I wanted to go home, but it turned out all right in the end.

He had a thing against the States, though because he went through the whole bus (it was an international student thing, 200 foreigners and a crap load of a lot of countries) and just completely brushed the Americans aside. Now, I have an issue with that because, clearly, if I'm studying in China, I'm not the kind of american they generally think of. Jesus, I'm the kind that they should be interacting with for chrissake!

We finally get out of traffic and to the parking lot and its about 8:30... Luckily it was a full moon, so we walk up the mountain (I kid you not, mountain, I say!) for several kilometers. The path was fairly treacherous but the moon helped, as did my "torch" *dies*.

We arrive at the wall, this 8-foot wide (at best) ridge, with a 5 m fall to either side, drop our stuff and head off to explore. We explore up and we explore down. We found a ruined sentry post on the down side that was really cool because it was like our private part of the wall.

Eventually we meander back and are roped into helping--because we're helpful. So we head down the mountain to bring up more water and sleeping rolls and toliet paper--really important stuff, ya know?

We roasted veggies around the fire, made marshmellows... took marshmellow shots (we had not graham crackers, so it was "pop in a piece of chocolate and ripe that fucker off the stick and swallow, bitch"). It was so good. We also shared some beer with some Belgians.

Eventually it got really late and we all bedded down. Thor--the crazy Norwegian, as I named him--Meg, Rachel, myself and Allie... all in about a 4x6 square. We had to sleep sideways all together to fit and everytime someone moved, it was like the domino effect. But we had a really good view of the moon and the sun, after it broke the clouds in the morning.

The morning consisted for more scampering and romping, poisonous spiders, feral dogs, and me, making a mandatory "No, everyone MUST take one water or else someone--probably me--will have to carry the case down. And its heavy". I really don't get how some people think. It is some much easier for 10 people to each stuff one water bottle in a back pack than for one poor soul to have to have lugged it up and back down. Really.

The busride home was a nap-nap-nappy time. We showered, hit the noodle house (yumyum) and then I crashed like I died. I slept for 4 hours *sigh* Getting to bed tonight will be interesting... Although, I'm still really exhausted, so it might be easy.