Steve
Perrin:
We’ve spent a full and busy time her in Beijing
and today’s author, Tiffany Fink-Haynes
is ready to tell you all about our first day in a Chinese
school and our trip to the Great Wall.
Today we traveled to visit of the great wonders of the
world, the Great Wall of China. As we rode to the Wall
in a cable car it finally dawned on me that we were in
China. The mountains around the wall are beautiful and
the Wall itself isn’t as large as I had imagined.
It is only six meters high by eight meters wide. As we
walked the Wall it was hard to believe it was built by
thousands of people who each carried the stones in baskets
to construct it. It was also disconcerting to learn thousands
of people had died in the process of building the Wall.
Walking the Wall was very difficult because some of the
steps are very steep, while other sections are completely
flat. Some sections had so many stairs we had to take
them two at a time. Mr. Perrin, Jordan, Paxton, Meg and
I walked as much of the Wall as we possibly could before
it was dangerous to proceed any further. Many of us explored
beacon towers, which were used to convey information.
Wolf dung, which gives off heavy smoke, was used for fires
in the towers during the day to signal when the enemy
was coming. After walking and becoming very tired most
of us enjoyed a ride down the Great Wall on an alpine
slide.
Here are Paxton, Tiffany,
Meg and Jordan at the upper limit of the wall. You can
see from their positions that this staircase is quite
steep. We’d hate to run down this!
After enjoying the Great Wall we traveled to Beijing Shunyi
Niu Lashan No. 1 High School in Beijing with 2,500 students.
The school grounds reminded me of a college because there
were individual buildings for each subject, the library
and student dormitories. Each of us enjoyed talking to
a group of Chinese students as they showed us around their
school. I enjoyed talking to Gi, a girl in her first year
of senior school. Although she felt her English ability
was weak I was impressed that we were able to talk for
our entire visit. She was very eager to learn about my
life as an American student and I was also eager to learn
about her life living away from her parents.
After going to a senior school we visited the schools
junior school. Many of the students were running or playing
basketball. I expected the school to be very orderly and
disciplined, but many of the students ran to the windows
of the building waving or shouted “Hello, pleased
to meet you.” We were able to see student’s
dormitories. Each room has six students, several desks
for them to do their homework and a bathroom with a sink
and toilet. The rooms were extremely neat and orderly.
We didn’t talk to as many students because they
didn’t know as much English, however they were all
eager to meet us and receive gifts.
After visiting a school I’m very excited for our
trip to Kunming. I’m excited to talk to other students
and compare and contrast all of the schools we visit.
So far our trip to China has been very eventful and fun
despite our lack of sleep and trying to recover from jet
lag.
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