Today I woke up at a reasonable hour, after having woken up four different times in the night, and was pleasantly surprised by the breakfast that was served to us. My fever feels like it has gone down and my throat is getting less swollen slowly yet surely. I enjoyed the pancake and the fried bread but I am already starting to miss fruits and veggies. The dressing coated cucumbers and tomatoes were much appreciated, the dressing they were drenched in and the meat reminiscent of ham served with them, was not. After breakfast we made our way to The Great Wall. I still haven’t gotten over how incredibly old it is and how incredibly tough it must have been to build without any modern day infrastructure. Even with proper infrastructure something of that size and capacity would be tough to create. The climb up was very sweaty, but nothing all of us couldn’t handle. Taking the “chute” or a toboggan the way down was certainly the best part. The view was incredible and everyone loves going quickly down metal contraptions. After the Wall we went to the Olympic Park. It was much, much larger than I thought it would be. The architecture was super hip n’ trendy and I was most intrigued by the IBM building on the outskirts of the Olympic park. I really enjoyed getting to see different parts of Beijing today and am still amazed by its huge size. 22 million is an incredible number and the city itself must be huge too in order to encompass such a crowd. I am very excited to sleep and am even more excited for tomorrow.
