June 28, 2008: This Portion of the Great Wall is Closed to the Public

when i say climb the great wall, i literally mean climb the mountain that it was on top of. we went to a portion of the great wall that is closed to the public...closed because it is falling apart and has no safety rails or anything. nobody is allowed up there because it is very likely you will die if you go up. which is exactly what we did, and very nearly died. it went a little something like this:

we climbed up the mountain. it was steep. and made of mud. it was raining. i faceplanted about 6 times.

we got up there. it was really misty. the wall was cool. made out of stone and what-have-you. couldn't really see much else because there was so much mist. kind of like standing in a giant white room.

we climb up a 1 to 2 story high WALL because the tour guide says the way down is on the other side.

the tour guide got confused. the tour guide was in fact a crazy man who lived in the mountains that we paid to show us the wall. he ran up the mountain like a monkey while chainsmoking the whole time. i dubbed him benjamin linus (the crazy guy from lost) because i was convinced he was leading us to our deaths while first playing mind games with us. we walked around for a good 2 hours on top of the wall because he couldn't find the way down. saw lots of the wall. lots of it.

we decide to go down the way we came up. it's been raining the whole time. its basically a mudslide. since i couldn't keep my balance the way up, i for sure couldn't on the way down. i fell around....25 times, basically skiied my way down part of it (with no skis mind you) and slid the rest of the way on my ass.

that's about it on my end. today is tuesday and all i want is a $1 burger but instaed i have to work for 2 more hours, take my hour long commute home and probs eat some chinese food. oh well, could be worse.