The Great Wall of China

So on my first trip to Beijing, it was too cold (about 10-15 degrees Fahrenheit) so Vinny and I decided that scaling the Great Wall of China probably wouldn't be the best idea. However, I could not go to China and not see the Great Wall. After scoping out the weather forecast for a few days, Vinny and I decided to trek out on a Sunday afternoon.

It had been pretty humid the day before so we were expecting not so great weather but the Great Wall emperors decided to show us some grace and we had a beautiful partly cloudy day in the lower 70s. Perfect weather for hiking the wall.

We took the public "high speed" train (it really was more like an Amtrak train speed instead of what we had anticipated) to the Badaling section of the wall. A funny story, on the train, we watched as a young girl about 4 years old walked down the middle aisle of the train, stop 5 steps from the public restroom door and urinated right in the middle aisle. Vinny was appalled, he kept saying, "She was steps away from the bathroom, what a culture..."

Hiking the wall was actually quite fun, we entered in at the Badaling gate and hiked both sections (to our left and right) for about 3 hours. On the way home, instead of taking the train, we took the public bus home despite the urgent and persistent taxi drivers that kept trying to charge us 200 yuan when the bus tickets were only 10 yuan each. Overall, I can say I made it to the Great Wall of China and afterwards started to look forward to returning back to the US.

Beijing in One Post

So I'm super tardy about this post but I wanted to wrap up my thoughts about spending 6 weeks in Beijing. For 6 weeks, I was a stay at home girlfriend. I went grocery shopping, cooked and cleaned while Vinny was in class. I know for those of you who know me well, you're probably shaking your heads in disbelief considering that is not very characteristic of me. One thing I did enjoy about being a stay at home girlfriend was buying fresh produce at the grocery store with my non-existent Chinese skills when everybody thought I was Chinese. What an experience... But I did like eating produce that was not grown for shelf life but for flavor. Everything I cooked just tasted better.

I also took a cooking class to learn basic Szechuan cuisine. the Szechuan peppercorn is one of my new favorite spices to cook with. The pictures at the beginning of this post were all from my cooking class and things I made :)