The Great Wall of China

As you can see, I have been busy working on this blog. (It is very fun and a little addicting!) It's nice to finally have the time to do something like this! I added the website Xist.com because I found so much useful info on it for my classroom and thought I would pass the site on. It is interesting to read all about the different countries. Did you know that China is almost as big as the US?

The Great Wall of China-

On Halloween day we left school to go to Beijing and the Great Wall. This trip was born from a joke! Since our kindergarten classes are studying the 7 continents this year, we decided to add in the 7 wonders of the world, and since we were studying Asia, we decided to the first wonder would be the Great Wall. My colleague mentioned one day that we should go to the GW with our students. (I thought she was joking, so I laughed and said how awesome that would be!) Before long we had an itinerary ready, our boss' approval and parents rearing to go!

One of our teachers, Nancy, has a husband who is a travel agent for large companies and he put our trip together for us. It was fantastic. We had three goals- the GW, rescued pandas and Olympic stadium. Since this was a trip for our students we added in different modes of transportation so the students could have those experiences as well. Parents had to accompany their children and pay for themselves. The two and a half day trip cost $300.00 USD per person which included everything; meals, transport, and entrance to the GW. I had 5 students sign up and the other class had 6. So we went to Beijing with eleven 5 year olds.

We took a bus from school to the train station. The overnight train took 12 hours to reach Beijing from Shanghai. It left at 7:00 pm and arrived at 6:50 am. All the train cars were sleepers with four beds, two on top and two below. The ride at night was very comfortable. We didn't see much outside the window since it was already dark when we left. After the children ran the hallway for an hour, everyone got ready for bed and I had my first lesson on a PSP Playstation

Most of the boys had Play Station video game thingies with them and they were trying to teach me how to play. They were very patient with me and loved playing for me when it was my turn because I was too slow. The only thing I managed to play was Pac Man! Everything else was beyond my comprehension!!!

After a very good nights sleep, we arrived in Beijing! We hired a bus to take us from place to place and our first stop was breakfast. We ate at a Cantonese restaurant which served delicious varieties of dumplings (what we call pot stickers in the US), rice , vegetables and tea. After breakfast we boarded the bus to the zoo.

This particular zoo is the one that is housing the pandas which have been displaced by the earthquake. They had 7 pandas total! A huge area had been made for them to swing and play. Two were older pandas and the rest were young. Pandas are normally loners and only meet up with other pandas to mate, but these that were born in captivity were playing and having a ball with each other. They were so soft and furry and cuddly looking, and of course eating bamboo. Did you know that pandas spend almost all day eating? They sleep at night, but wake up after about 4 hours of sleeping to eat. The bamboo cannot sustain them for long. Pandas used to be carnivores, but because of the change in their environment, they are now totally dependent on bamboo for their food supply. Supposedly there are only 15 pandas living outside of China, while over 100 live in China zoos and reserves. Those that are born in zoos live for quite awhile. I'm not sure how many have been released back to the wild, if any.

The zoo had many other animals, but we were short on time (plus our classes had just been to the Shanghai zoo for our field trip) so we got back on the bus and headed for our hotel. We stayed in a 5 star hotel(China standards, not US they told me) which was very nice. After checking in and a shower we traveled to a Western buffet for lunch. French fries, pizza, fruit and Chinese dishes were among the items available.

The Bird's Nest is the name of the stadium where the track and field portion of the Olympic Games were held. And it looked just like a bird's nest! Inside was huge...90,000 seats? (I may just be making that up.) We were able to go all the way down to the astro turf. Can you imagine being 5 and looking up into the seats from the field? It must have been amazing! Right next door was the aquatic center. By this time the students were tired, so I took them back to the bus while parents went on to see the aquatic center.

Since we had time before dinner, our tour guide took us shopping (a favorite pastime of Chinese, Americans and Singaporeans!). Some went to the grand shopping malls to get winter clothing since the temp was suppose to drop by Sunday and we were told it would be incredibly windy on the wall. The rest of us went to the famous food street that sold everything from edible cockroaches to seahorses. Edoukou and I tires deep fried cream. That was as courageous as we got! We didn't see anyone trying anything except the candy apples and noodles.

Dinner was traditional Peking Duck. To eat Peking Duck, you take a piece of very thin crepe like dough and smother it with a special sauce. Then you put some duck in the middle, roll it up and eat it. I'm not a big fan of duck, so my opinion is biased, but I think I'll stay with Mr. Turkey. Did you know that Peking Duck is actually Beijing Duck? The westerners that were trying to tell people about the duck called it Peking, meaning to pronounce Beijing. But the B in Chinese is very close to our P. It is softer than a P but harder than a B. (yea, now you know why I still don't know Chinese!). When pinyin came into use, they spelled it closer to the Chinese pronunciation. (Pinyin is the phonetic spelling of Chinese characters/sounds.)

After dinner, we had a parent that needed to get some warm clothes for her son, so we HAD to go to the fake market. :) It was 5 times bigger than the one in Shanghai! They had everything including an awesome green winter coat for Edoukou! I'm sure most of the shops made enough money during the Olympics that they could take off a whole season or year!

On our way back to the hotel, we passed the Forbidden City (all lit up) and Tianemen Square. These places, plus the Summer palace and Ming's tomb will be enough reason to come back to Beijing. Even at 9:00 at night, everything was so clean and neat. Supposedly this was because they had been cleaning frantically before and during the Olympics. Two months later, it is still squeaky clean!

Sunday was the awaited day! The Great Wall! We got up by 7:00 for breakfast and check out. Our 5 star hotel offered an excellent American and Chinese buffet. Boarding the bus our students were rested and ready. They had been waiting a long time for this! The GW was less than an hour from downtown Beijing. Our destination was Badaling, the most famous part of the GW. There are four parts you can see close to Beijing. The non-Beijing parts of the wall are scattered along the Mongolian Chinese border all the way to Korea! The history of the wall is fascinating! (I have included a link to wikipedia for the history of the GW.)

You can see the GW way off in the distance. It looks like white rocks, and if you don't know what you are looking for, you would think it is only that. We passed one entrance to go further up to Badaling. Once there, the bus dropped us off and the climb began. We paid our entrance fee of 50 yuan (7 dollars) and started posing! It looks just like it does in pictures! It was a beautiful sunny, clear, crisp autumn day! The wind was nonexistent as we began our climb. Now, people had been telling us how steep it was, but I thought they were just wimps! I couldn't believe what we were expected to walk/climb! There are two ways ways to climb the wall, the easy way and the hard way. Of course, everyone opted for the hard way!

The first part was no problem. It's amazing; no graffiti, no huge carved naughty words, just brick and mortar. There were many people climbing, but the farther you went the less people. At one point you became a huge believer in gravity! People should have been falling off the Wall because of the steepness! Luckily there were hand rails along the sides to help you going up and coming down. We found it was much easier to run down than trying to slowly walk down . We made it to the 4th tower before we headed back. It just went on and on and on.....

The Grand Canyon is one thing, but to be on something so grand and to know that it was made by human hands thousands of years ago was incredible. To think of the blood, sweat and tears of the people who built it and the thousands of soldiers who had to guard from it was mind boggling. But the proudest moment was when one of my students looked out over the Wall and exclaimed to his mom, "I don't see any enemies!" Yes, Ryan had been listening in class after all.....

Another grand buffet was waiting for us after we descended. I was so happy I had not lost any students. (Really, I had that fear. If you knew my students, you'd understand!) We left the wall for the Beijing airport and flew home without a hitch. It was an amazing trip!