June 28 (Thursday)
  It's great wall day!! I woke up at 6:45 this morning feeling well rested and 

ready to go. There were no hiccups with the shower or anything so I got ready 

to go and went down to breakfast. Had some good chicken and rice with eggs in it. 

 Then had to wait about 45 mins before leaving.
Our first stop to was a Chinese summer school where kids go to learn English. 

I had expected teenagers in uniforms sitting at desks. Instead I was pleasantly

 surprised to find kids between the ages of 4-6 in street cloths and kungfu outfits

 singing songs and telling us there names. A few of us went up and sang head 

shoulders knees and toes with them and then they taught us a Chinese love song. 

They were adorable!!
After this we drove for about an hour outside the city to a hotel near the great 

wall for lunch. Nothing was weird so to speak but it wasn't very good either. It 

had the feel of being Chinese-American food. Very interesting. Right bellow us was 

a souvenir shop. I was really excited at first but the people were SO annoying. 

They wouldn't leave us alone and everything was pretty expensive. One lady followed

 me all the way around the store trying to get me to buy a jade pig. She yelled 

at me when she saw I had set it down. Then we went to the great wall. And oh my 

goodness. It was AMAZING. unfortunately it rained and there was a ton of fog so 

we couldnt see far away. But the wall was breathtaking. We got soaked and took a

 bunch of pictures. Instead of going to the highest point a bunch of us opted for 

the much harder side. There was one point when the stairs were almost vertical

 before us. Overall this has been the best part so far. When we left the wall we

 had to wait for a half hour at the gift shop. There was a man in the back corner

 painting glass jars. I had watched him a bit earlier. The cool thing wasn't just

 that he was hand painting them, what blew my mind was that at the top was a little

 hole. He put his brush in the hole and was painting backwards. I'll say that again...the paintings are INSIDE the jar. We were suppose to bargain with the people which I had been doing, but the man was so nice and I greatly admired his worked. I got the cheapest one. A ball with a dragon on it which is my parent's zodiac. He wrote their names in it. I am very happy with it. 
We drove two hours back downtown to the Red Theatre to watch the Legend of Kungfu

. Call me a theater nerd but that will probably prove to be one of my FAVORITE 

parts of the tour. The stage, the lights, the set, (the men, without their shirts

 on)...everything was so cool! Not to mention the actual moves they were doing. 

My jaw was dropping every few seconds. Not even my hunger or wet feet could bring

 me down during that show. After the show we went to get dinner. Across the street

 from our restaurant we saw Mr. Brown's famous donkey meat restaurant! Very funny 

to see. The food was ok tonight...the best part was when the waitress came with a

 plate of chicken, tripped, was holding the plate of food over markie's head, and

 I caught the plate before she dropped it. 
We went wandering again tonight. Made it all the way to a huge intersection. 

In china...the cross walks are a joke. You j-walk and don't wait for cars. So

 we followed the locals to see when to go. My running background came in handy. 

A couple of guys past us in the street and were very excited to practice some 

 English on us. They said hello and giggled when we said hello back.