Wow… do I have a lot to catch you all up on. The last two days have been very busy for us here in China. Besides are practicing and getting used to the humidity and smog we had a chance to do some sight seeing. Wednesday morning we practiced and then left for our excursion to the Great Wall and Leisure City. The coaching staff thought it would be good for us to get some time away from the village before we are going to be pretty much stuck here once our games start. We took a bus about an hour and a half outside the village to a section of the Great Wall. The view along the way was very pretty, lots of fields and trees. Mostly peaceful. It was hard to see to far in the distance, however, due to the heavy smog. When we got closer to the wall there were beautiful mountains and great picture opportunities. We started the climb up the mountain through a street filled with village vendors pushing us to buy everything from bananas to carvings of stone with our names on it. It was quite the experience with local vendors. Our trek up the mountain took about 30 minutes and roughly 700 steps. There was a cable car to the top but we decided on the rugged way. Maybe not the best choice in the 90 degree weather. But needless to say we made it to the top dripping in sweat and amazed by the view. The wall was a structure like no other I have ever seen. We could see it go across the mountain peaks in each direction with towers every couple hundred yards. We spent about 30 minutes walking along the top of the wall stopping for pictures before we scaled down the mountain on a toboggan ride. This was not quite as neat as taking in the beautiful view of the wall, but it was definitely a highlight of the trip. We each sat on a small plastic toboggan that flew down the mountain in a silver chute. There was a lever to control your speed, of course we all wanted to see who could go down the fastest. We all made it to the bottom of the mountain safely!
Below are some pictures from the Great Wall. From L to R: Angie Loy and myself on top of the Wall, the view from atop the Great Wall, Kelly Doton preparing for the ride down the mountain.
After the Great Wall excursion, we then drove about another hour to a place called Leisure City. This small resort area was filled with outdoor spas and an indoor water park. We stayed in a 6 room pagoda that had a courtyard with an outdoor hot bath in the center. The water looked slightly questionable so we all stayed out of it. We enjoyed dinner at a very nice hotel and then headed to bed.
Today, Thursday, we were planning on spending a few hours in the morning exploring Leisure City, when we were happily informed that the Beijing 2008 Torch Relay would be passing through the area and that the water park was closed until 11am. We were actually very excited for this, not only because it was the famous and amazing torch relay but because the water park consisted of 2 water slides and a very small and similarly questionable wave pool. So we waited along with about 500 other spectators for the torch to pass through. It was quite an incredible sight. We saw two “hand-offs” of the torch. In reality, each runner of the torch only runs about 40 meters with the flame and then they pass it on to another runner. It was a very neat thing to see so close to the beginning of the games and right here in Beijing.
So, overall our out of the village getaway turned out to be quite the exciting time. With all the excitement, however, we are very glad to be back in the comforts of the village and look forward to getting back onto the field tonight. We have a scrimmage tonight with Korea and one more final tune up tomorrow morning before the Games begin.
Today I’d like to thank my two wonderful younger siblings Timothy and Carrie. They have gone to more hockey games over the last 6 years than they probably would have liked. They traveled the whole way to Russia and now are preparing to leave in 2 days to come to China!
