Day One In China

Here we are at The Great Wall. What an awesome experience. There is no reasoning as to the steps however, they range from flats to 4 to 12-14 inches in height in some places. The wall is a facinating structure that twists and turns itself around the mountain. The towers you see in the distance are/were Guard Towers to look out over the valley to watch for raiding Mongols. Some are quite small others fairly large as they were used for garrisons. It was a beautiful day to be there as well. We climbed to the tower just over our inside shoulders, roughly a million miles away and 40,000 feet. Seriously, there are some 25,000 towers that line the wall and they are two arrow shots from each other in spacing. This way the soldiers could defend the whole wall at any given time. At this point in our day we were coming down and looking for a "Coke Lite". We tried to post additional photos but did not have the patience this evening. The Great Wall was our second stop of the day with a Jade Factory being the first. It is quite interesting to see how jade is carved and polished, not to mention how it was graded on a ABC type of scale. On the way back to the city we stopped at a Vase manufacturing facility. Famous for vases and lacquer paintings, this was something to see. Lastly we visited The Summer Palace in Beijing to more amazing buildings and an opportunity for everyone to get a look at "the Gringos". Our day begins early tomorrow as we go to The Forbidden Palace, an International Church and ultimately fly out to Hunan. Well it's 10:30 so gotta go for now. It's less than 48 hours before we get to see our "girl".

Rick