Orientation and The Great Wall.

After blogging yesterday morning Michelle and I decided to take a quick swim in the hotel pool.  It was refreshing and a good way to wake up a bit before breakfast.  We then headed to the breakfast buffet which was huge.  There were both western and Chinese style breakfast foods available.  I started with Waffles and something called an "Ocean" egg…???  It was kind of like a poached egg with some weird bit of sauce on it.  It was pretty good.  Then I headed back and got some eggs with mystery stuff in them and some good ol' fried american hash browns and some bacon and some fried noodles with veggies.   There were also pastries, smoothies, fruit, congee, and various cereals to eat.

The orientation was shortly after breakfast and we were given a red silk notebook with some new pictures of  Lisi and an update.  That was cool but all the pictures look like her first batch….like maybe they jerked her out of bed, thrust her into strange clothes, pointed a strange devise at her and said "SMILE!".  Grumpy face.  Ha Ha!….

The orientation lasted a couple of hours then we met up with a small group to go to The Great Wall.  We stopped for lunch at a huge restaurant/gift shop and had some very good Chinese food.  I suspect it was rather Americanized and a typical place to take tourist but it was better than most American Chinese food places.  I did get a surprise mouth full of fish bones though….ugh.  Spit….cough…but overall really good food.  Then we headed out for the wall.  It was really amazing and you cant really grasp what these people have done without standing on it and putting yourself in their shoes.  The area we went to had a very steep climb and some nice views.  Michelle decided to tackle the steepest section but I decided to stay back in the sunshine.  If I had my hoodie on I couldn't see to climb and if it was off my head would freeze.  Shell did great an made it up and back down again without tumbling down head over heals.  

On our way back we stopped at a silk museum.  It was pretty cool but it was about ½ tour and ½ "now that you've seen how we make silk please buy some of our silk products" .  They push pretty hard for you to buy stuff here.  Even at the restaurants.  If you slow down in front of one, someone comes out to drag you in….Beijing is very amazing, and HUGE.