Day Two - Great Wall of China, Beijing to Shenyang

Today I woke up to the sweet sound of my alarm clock at 6:00. Even though I would have liked to sleep in more, I was happy to see I slept through the whole night and was no longer jet lagged. I still fall asleep on the bus whenever we go places, but I'm also not alone. We checked out of the hotel after breakfast and loaded the bus to go to the Great Wall. I don't remember if it was the same place I hiked last time I was here, but it looked really similar. I saw the chain of locks there again which is said to be a symbol of someone's unbreakable love for another person. And then I hiked to the first two towers. It wasn't terrible hot today, but it was hot enough when I was climbing the steps. It's really hard to climb up because the steps aren't consistent with the height. There are some steps that are really short, normal, and then some that are so tall that my knees were reaching my chest to get up to the next one and the railing is the perfect height for only children. I stopped at the gift shop between the two towers to buy a water and cool off. After making it to the second tower, I decided to hike back down since we were meeting the group at a certain time. Instead of taking the stairs down, we took the newer, "easier" area. It cut off some of the time which we used to look throughout the gift shop, but it also cut off some stress on my knees going down all the uneven stairs. After that we ate lunch and then went to the train station to get on a bullet train to Shen Yang, which is the Provence that the orphanage is in. There were so many people waiting to get in and pushing to get in front of you, so it was fun having the experience of keeping your spot. It was different because you had to carry your luggage throughout the station and very rushed since it was a bullet train. After five hours, we made it to the Provence and had to rush off the train in four minutes before it started moving again. When we drove to the hotel, we found out that we didn't have reservations. We later on found out that the hotel were staying at was a little ways down the road. Once we checked in, everyone went to sleep but a couple friends and I went down to KFC. The lady at the desk told us it was only down the street, but we actually ended up walking a couple miles to it. It wasn't an argument when someone suggested to take a taxi back. It was crazy to see so many college students in there at midnight studying; it was like our Starbucks but there's one at every block too. All together, it was a great day being a tourist and exploring the Chinese train station. Tomorrow we get to sleep in and go shopping for the orphanage!