It's Hard Becoming a "Man".

View from Gondola.

Jagged mountainside. They planted trees to prevent erosion.

Here is Chris and Melissa as we begin climbing down 5 towers to get to the zip line. My quads were screaming by the end.

See the reservoir below. That's were we had to go to catch the zip.
The steps were uneven and very narrow at times. This section of the wall didn't have hand railings.

Cheryl "Vanna" looking through an arch way in one of the towers. The right side of the wall is Mongolia.

This was taken on the side of the tower. We could go through the towers or around them.

This boy was on the wall with his parents who make a living by selling items on the wall.

Reservoir that we went over on the zip line.

This was taken by me on the way down the zip line.

Melissa and I strapped in our gear and ready to go.

Ira and Cheryl are the first two to go.

These critters were everywhere on the path up the mountain as well as on the Wall. When we sat down, we had to be careful not to sit on one or have one crawl up our legs.

Boat Driver

Exhausted climbers on our way back to Beijing.

Sorry for not posting the last couple of days. It's getting harder and harder to find time because of work, sightseeing, and attending Olympics events, not to mention finding time to sleep.

They had a saying here in China that "When you climb the Great Wall, you become a man." Well, I'm officially a "Man". That was one of the toughest things I have ever done. It reminded me of my hike up Yosemite Falls, only much harder. My apartment mates and Chris, the Nike representative, had a once in a life time adventure up and down the Great Wall. We rented a van with a driver for the day. It's nice having other volunteers here who live in Beijing. Jason hooked us up with this driver. The part of the wall that we visited is call SiMaTai. It was approximately 120 km (70+miles) away from Beijing. The last 15km were winding up the mountain. It is the furthest of the 3 main parts of the wall that people who go to Beijing visit. It is the least commercialized and most like how the Wall would look because it hasn't had many modern improvements done to it. This section was originally built during the Northern Qi Dynasty (550-577) and rebuilt during the Ming Dynasty (1573-1620).

I overcame my fear of heights. First we had to take a gondola. It wasn't as bad as I thought considering I've never been up on a ski lift before. I rode with Chris. We had to jump into and out of the gondola because the lift never stops. This took us 2/3 the way up the mountain and then we walked the rest of the way up. There were spectacular views and many switch-backs. They have local farmers wait on along the way and try to sell souvenirs. When I politely said "No," they continued to follow. This was a good thing for me, because the altitude coupled with my asthma made it difficult to climb. This lady escorted my up to the wall. She would fan me when I'd stop to rest. As I approached the top, my friends saw that now 2 ladies were helping me and they Melissa and Cheryl shouted, "Here comes Queen Illa with her escorts. Hail to Queen Illa." (They took a picture of me, but I'll have to post it another time.) It took me about 45 minutes. It was hot and I was sweating like crazy. After resting for about 20 minutes I joined the others. Initially I felt pretty bad, but after the rest we began walking 6 towers down to the inertia rope (zip-line). It was either the rope ride down or the climb. At this point exhaustion won over fear. There was no way that would be able to climb all the way back down the mountain. We had already climbed about halfway down. The inertia rope was thrilling, exhilarating, and quick. Afterwards we took as short boat ride to where we began our climb. We were all proud of our accomplishment.

As soon as we got home, we took showers and it was off to do our night shift at the USA House.

In the house that night, I was assigned the duty of "bouncer" at the door to a special event in which members from different international delegations were invited to a dinner. It was my job to make sure that only those with proper credentials were allowed. I stood at the doors to the event area and the outside patio for 3 hours. This is were it began to be painfully clear that my legs were exhausted. It took about 2 days before the pain in my legs subsided.

Two gentlemen at the party noticed the job I was doing and decided to give me their country's Olympic pins. One was from Gambia and the other was from Korea. My boss told me that she had received positive comments about the good job I had done that night.

 I didn't get home until almost 2am. We walk home every night past 1am. The streets are virtually empty and the city is quite. It's a nice way to decompress and wind down. I felt totally safe walking around at night.

I'm so happy that I was able to overcome my fear of heights and conquer the Wall. I'm glad that I did this when I was still "young".