Hardin Clan: The Great Wall

Of course while we were in Beijing we had to take a trip to the Great Wall. The trip did not start out great. Eryn threw up in the van on the way there! yuck! Thankfully, she was wearing "snow pants" and we were able to wipe it off and clean up pretty quickly. She did not smell great, but she was not wet and it was too cold to smell much outside. It could have been much worse. I think she was just car sick, because she did not act sick at all after that.

You can see the Wall at several different sites. We decided to visit Ba da Ling. This is the most popular site and probably the best "preserved". We figured that the climb would not be too hard (ha!). We did take a cable car part way up the mountain and then we could walk along the wall.
The problem was that it snowed the day before so the wall was covered with a film of ice. It was very slippery. Liam fell four times before we could even make it to the first set of stairs. Jon and the girls continued up, but Poppa, Granny, Liam and I stayed behind for some of the climb. Liam was not the only one that fell both Poppa and Granny took a tumble. Thankfully no one was seriously hurt.

We did manage to walk along some parts of the wall, but it was slow and icy. As you can tell, it was also very cold up there!

No, Hallie has not started wearing glasses. These are not real glasses, well they are real, but only with only clear glass. She bought them on the street in Beijing. She bargained for them too. The lady wanted 25 yuan but Hallie got them for 13 yuan (I think). She thinks they are cool. I was proud of her for bargaining (in Chinese).

To help pay for her glasses and other souvenirs, Hallie charges one yuan if someone wants to take her picture. It doesn't always work like she wants it to, but when it does she has an sense on empowerment (and a little extra pocket change).

This day was really not the best. Lots of things went wrong.... but we did get to see and actually walk (or slip) on The Great Wall of China. That's pretty cool!