April 13, 2011

Zoe

CHINA! Even workingoff an extremely weird sleep schedule it is amazing. Everything is new! Sights, sounds, tastes, smells, tastes! The food is crazy! I honestly cannot think of another word. There are things that I didn’t imagine. My favorite so far was this mushroomdish. It was slimy and amazinglydelicious. There were whole mushrooms and it was the most interesting thing I have ever tasted in my entire life.

We also went to the great wall!!! I didn’t know what to think the entire time I was there. All that was going through mind was, “We are walking on the Great Wall of China! We are in China! I am sitting inside a tower on the Great Wall of China!” It was a surreal experience for me. I have never seen anything like the picturesque mountains that I saw today. Go google pictures of the Great Wall and the surrounding mountains. Now imagine yourself there, and multiply thatby a thousand. That is how I felt today. Everything looked like a painting done by some fabulously talented painter. It was UNREAL! The hiking was super fun too. I am sure that my legs are going to be supersore tomorrow. There was one tower that you could climb to the top of. The difficulty was that the stairs were crazy steep with one step reaching a little above my waist. Once you got up there though, using your hands and trying desperately not to slam you camera into the stone wall (success!), it was worth it. The scenes were amazing. Even though we were there, staring at them for hours, hiking along the wall and staring at the mountains, I couldn’t tear my eyes away. All the way to the end of the hike I was fixated on the landscape. In the end we took an alpine slide down to the bottom and that in itself was a unique experience. Even though I was there I couldn’t get it through my mind that I was riding an alpine slide from the Great Wall of China!.

After thewall we all went out to lunch with more food—hot chili peppers included—andmore horrendous attempts, by me and others, to communicate with people who didn’t speak our language. The Olympic venues were next and let me till you that the Birds-nest is much, much bigger in person. The architecture is fantastic, beautiful and imaginative. The water cube was one ofthe coolest things I have ever seen and we all desperately wanted to go inside and see what is now used as a water park, complete with slides, a wave-pool,and gigantic jellyfish hanging from the ceiling.

All-in-all, my first day in China was unimaginable. The group is really close and already many inside jokes that I’m sure will be brought back to the United States are circulating around. Now it is time to take a shower and hand wash my clothes before going to bed and spending another fantastic, mind-blowing and unique day in China.