We have now scaled the great wall! woohoo! We did this yesterday. Sunday we met the group in the evening and they are all really nice, there is a mixed group of ages and people are from canada, new zealand and australia. we are the only english which i was quite suprised about! they all went out for dinner on the first night but we didnt join them as Darren was really poorly. The next morning we met them early for our trip to the great wall. it was a 2 hour drive (of course, i slept!) and when we arrived it was really exciting. We bought our tickets and got harrased by people with stalls at the bottom. Next was a half hour climb up steps to get to the wall which wasnt great for poor Darren who was still feeling a bit rough! but we made it! once at the top it was amazing to think that we were standing on something that could be seen from space! the views were amazing and it was really funny to think of the fact that the wall didnt actually work! after this we had a walk along and took some photos with our disposable camera so cant put any up sorry! we found a little offchute of the wall where we went and sat for a bit lying in the sun relaxing and reading our guide book. we spent about 2 hours up there and then headed down. and theonly way tog et down from thisarea of the wall in style in by a toboggan ride! so of course we did and it was so much fun (if a little scary in some places!) after this we headed back to beijing and by the time we had got something to eat (including a vegetable spring roll with the smallest shrimps in the world peering out of it with their beady little eyes!) it was too late to do anything so we just chilled out till dinner. we met the group for dinner and went to a night market where they sell all sorts of crazy food. some of the braver people tried fried scorpians on sticks! i was a bit safer and had strawberrys on sticks covered in caramel which was lovely but hell on your teeth! after this we went to an area called Sanlitun where all the bars are (real bars this time, not brothels!) and did some drinking and chatting and got to know the group a bit better. it was a lot of fun but i htink everyone was pretty knackered from the Wall so we headed home about half 12.

today we had a lie in and then went to somewhere called the pearl marketwhich is a market over about 6 floors and is really cool but you get so pestered there! our aim was to get a camera and after a lot of bargaining we managed to get a 10 mp what we thought was sony. onyl when we got home did i realise that it isnt actuallya sony but doesnt have a brand name, just has a sony sticker on it! but we onky paid 50quid for it with batteries and a memory card and it still seems like a fairly decent one so i cant be bothered to get annoyed about it! im just pleased to be able to use a digital camera again instead of a disposable. anyway now we are just deciding what to do for dinner. i guess its going to be chinese again!