Adventuring Hermit: China Day 2; Great Wall; Amyloidosis Awarness!

So today started out well, we had a great breakfast at the hotel then we all knew that we had to be ready by 9am. So we all ran to get ready but yeah fun story happened. Apparently Amanda, one of the girls on the trip, forgot her key to her room but Erin her roommate was up in their room. So she thought she could just catch the elevator up to their room. Well, in China, you need your key card in order to get to your floor. Well, my room was just one floor beneath theirs so I used my card to get her to my floor and she was just going to take the stairs one more flight. We were waiting around for a bit and the doors to the stairwells was just behind me…then after a while I heard soft knocking coming from the door. I walked over and tried the door and it was locked. She said that all the other floors were locked tight too; she couldn’t get out. I told her to go to the next floor and we would get her their; then a security guard passed me and he was speaking Chinese but I heard ‘American’ and I knew he was talking about Amanda. Apparently she disappeared and they didn’t know where she went. Turns out Erin called down for her and she was able to climb the stairs to get back up. I think she climbed those stairs like six or seven times. Fail on china’s code for fire escape or anything of the like. But fun story!

We started our tour off by going to a Jade museum, I didn’t get anything but if you spend $100 dollars you get a free jade ring. My sister bought a crushed jade sand picture and Erin bought a legit Jade ring and with their powers combined… I mean their receipts combined I got the free Jade ring. The rest of our group did similar things and so my sister was able to get one too.

Our next stop was the Great Wall; this was my second time to the Great wall but the first time was during winter and this was like late summer/ fall. So there were surprisingly a lot more insects. Yep, one of the seven wonders of the world and I focused on all the flying bugs or squished bugs that were around me. But hey we made it to the top again and it was great cause I wore the T-shirt that is for my Uncle; so I can get a picture and send it to my cousin so we can bring awareness to his rare disease.

After the great wall, we went back to the Jade museum because there was a restaurant on the second floor. The food was good; mainly Kung pow chicken, fried fish, vegetables and they even offered a shot of their very special alcohol which had 56% alcohol in it which is equivalent to 4 cups of wine. So that’s a lot… no worries I didn’t try it but a girl did at our table and she said it tasted awful.

We then went and checked out the Bird’s Nest; it is one of the buildings China built for one of the Olympics they hosted. Not really that exciting but the venders in the area we looked at it from were a bit crazy and they followed us around with wire dragons and kites trying to get us to buy them. Some of us bought their stuff but they were good deals.

Texco, was our next stop; that’s just a grocery store but grocery stores in foreign countries are the best… we bought cookies and snacks.

There was an optional part of our tour for a show called the Mask show; the show was good; the whole story was a bit cliché but the outfits were awesome and intricate; the stage was amazing! They flooded the whole place during one sequence. They also had translation on a side screen for us so that we can know what was going on; sadly the translation was a bit odd so some parts we were still kinda confused about. They did have real white peacocks on their head during one part which was pretty cool. There also was a trampoline gymnastics part, which was pretty cool.