sightseeing, part 3

So after the Forbidden City we visited a silk museum and then made our way to lunch and then to the Great Wall. We visited the wall at a famous pass where there are a series of very steep steps to climb up to various watch towers. The steps are old and uneven so you have to climb very deliberately. In some places it was so steep that you had to pull yourself up by the hand rail. There were many people who gave up and just quit, sitting on the steps before even reaching the first watch tower. If you make it past the first tower there is a sign that says "hero cards" but the building where they give them out was closed so we just took our picture next to the sign. We walked up to the second watch tower and then waited for a little while but the wind was gusting pretty strong so we decided to come back down. Everyone in our group made it past the first tower and a few went all the way up past where we stopped. Ryan probably could have made it much further than me but my legs were like jello on the way back down. I'm glad we have tomorrow free to take it easy. We leave for the train station at 3 PM so we can just rest all morning, in case my legs are too sore from all the stairs. After the Great Wall we drove back into town, passing the olympic stadium. The photo of the odd shaped building with many identical buildings beside it is of a 7 star hotel that overlooks the olympic stadium and the water cube. Our bus driver said that he picked up Kobe Bryant at that hotel during the olympics. This is just adding to our new celebrity complex, we have the same bus driver as Kobe! My diabetes success for the day was that after walking about 3 hours through the Tainnemen/ Forbidden City area and then hiking up the Great Wall for an hour I still had a pre-dinner BG of 145! That after abruptly changing the time on my pump yesterday (go me!), no small feat. We went to dinner with the group and the coolest thing was I actually got to use some of my Chinese when I asked the waitress to split some of the bill onto our credit card. I said yi, bao, and then made a 0 with my hand for 180 yuan. The rest of the group was impressed. A year and a half of CDs and stuff is finally paying off. Off to rest, there are a ton of photos here and we have many more but it takes a while to upload them. I'll try to upload video footage of us climbing the Great Wall tomorrow AM. Zuo Tian (goodnight)!