October was a very busy month for us. We made it to our new school and were working on setting up a schedule and routine for classes. Then Mid-Autumn Festival, or the Moon Festival, came around. This festival is a big holiday for all of China. Most of the people get work off and schools are out for a whole week! We had our long vacation during this time. Our plan was to fly to Xi'an to see the terracotta warriors and then get on an overnight train to Beijing to see the Great Wall and other sights there. The trip to the airport should have been two hours, but in the taxi with the holiday traffic it ended up taking six hours which made us miss our flight to Xi'an. The airport was crazy busy due to holiday travel and they had no other flights going out until the end of the week. This was one moment I have been incredibly grateful for technology. I could look up flights, hotels, and itinerary options without having to fight with broken English or google translate.
We ended up skipping our visit to Xi'an and stayed an extra two days in Guangzhou. Luckily we found a flight to Beijing and a cheap hotel. This hotel was terrible! The water from the sink and shower smelled horrible and the bathroom door didn't even really close. Luckily we were only there for one night. The next morning we were picked up by a tour guide and driver and they took us up to the great wall. We set out on a hike on the traditional/ non restored side of the wall. I think we hiked 7 miles that day up and around on this steep and rugged wall. We hiked down to a farmer's house and had dinner with their family. The food was delicious! After changing our clothes and cleaning up a bit we grabbed some sleeping gear and headed back up the wall to the watch tower for the night. It was probably one of the worsts nights sleep I've had, but it sure was fun! we woke up freezing at about 5 am and packed up camp to head down for breakfast.
After breakfast we drove to another village and climbed straight up the side of the mountain to get to the wall. It was incredibly hard, but worth it once we got to the top. We traveled miles on the old wall and then a few more miles on a restored portion of the wall. The very top section we climbed overlooked a lake. After our hike we went to a village for lunch and then they drove us into the heart of Beijing to our hostel.
We spent the next few days exploring the city. PS. our hostel was amazing! it was a really weird design and we basically had our own little houses, but it was fun. They did move us the last night to the top floor because the government didn't like having so many foreigners in the building so i ended up sleeping on a floor in a room. The trip ended up being really fun! We learned to navigate the subway and explored the Olympic stadium and Beijing zoo. We did so much walking by the end of it i was completely exhausted.
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