The great, greater, greatest, fantastico Great Wall! It really does deserve its name. There is a saying attributed to Mao that you are not a man until you have climbed the Great Wall -　のOK, so now we are men! That phrase `climbing the wall` really applies, you really do CLIMB it. It seemed like we would be strolling along on top of a huge wall with towers sprinkled around every so often, but it is more like climbing a ladder – that thing is STEEP! And my sister, the marathon runner, kept wanting to go to the top…until she realized that every time we got to the top, there was yet another top! We finally picked the top most tower that we could see from our negotiation point and stopped there.

 The most interesting thing about the Great Wall is that it is like a mini UN. People are climbing that wall from all over the world, and they each respond to it differently according to their culture. The CHinese young men ran up to prove their strength – one young man was even carrying his girlfriend. Now that`s love…or insanity, I`m not sure which. The Americans were all laughing and making jokes about coronaries, while the Germans and Brits were trodding on with a stiff upper lip. Two middle-aged Spanish women were crying out, `ayuda me, ayuda me!` (help me, help me) while their husbands at the top laughed and took pictures saying, `Que linda!` (How beautiful!). An African man wanted to know, `Where did they live on here?` while an Indian woman was content to park in the shade of a tree while her family climbed up without her. And the French people hung out in the cafe and enjoyed the view. Gotta love culture…