Back to Beijing and third time at the Great Wall
01.10.2017 - 01.10.2017
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Nanchang 2017-2018
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- **MOST PHOTOS FROM THIS TRIP ARE STOLEN FROM SHYLO***
I took the train on Thursday night to do some resident permit stuff in Beijing. Shylo and her dad were meeting me in the early evening at their hotel. I waited for three hours in the police station with Sheila, who I hate, so that was awkward. I spent the whole time trying to be pleasant so that she wouldn't suddenly stop helping me switch all the paperwork over to my new job.
Shylo's plane landed at around 3:30 p.m. and that's about the time we got out of there. So, I slowly made my way to the hotel, the Wangfujing Crowne Plaza. It was very swanky, but I sat in the lounge for about four hours, listening to a piano player who only knew five songs. I was getting a little stir crazy, so I called my mom at about 6 a.m. her time, in case someone had called her with anynews. I didn'tknow when I should start panicking.
Finally they arrived and it felt so strange to see them in my hemisphere. It was a disjointed feeling. Anyway, we went out to get some duck, but I got lost of course, and it was closed by the time we got there. Disappointed, we stopped at the next open one, and it wasn't half bad. We took the subway home exhausted. I forgot just how far away everything actually is in Beijing. It's pretty tiring there.
I started feeling feverish and sick that night, sniffling and freezing. I had to turn off the air conditioner and huddle with hot water in my bottle, while everyone else sweated in the warm room all night. Sorry.
We all woke up really early but Shylo was the one to get us going. We had breakfast on the run, Shylo and Mr. Pruyn's first tofu crepe wrap thing. It was great.
We made it out to our small farm stay by 10 ish. The owner wasn't there, so Shylo and her dad wandered around while I took a nap on this random lady's couch. I had a full on flu/cold at that point. After they came back, the owner still wasn't there, so we went out again together to the coiling dragon section of the great wall.
The undulating hills looked like the back of a dragon with towers and turrets sticking up all along the ridge, like the dragon's spikes and scales. I was about to die of illness, so I just waited for them at the bottom , passed out on a rock beneath a spindly tree.
We got back to the hotel and had a homecooked dinner of beef, potatoes and tofu, along with lots of vegetables. I must've went to bed at 5 or 6 p.m., I was so tired. The others went soon after me. I was exhausted and worried about climbing another, taller mountain the next day, Crouching Tiger Mountain.
