Day 4- More Great Wall

Today, we woke up at 7:00 AM. After taking a shower and getting dressed, we headed over to breakfast in another room of the hotel. We sat down at a large, yellow table with a lazy Susan which seated all 16 of us. After we ate, we took the bus to the start of the Great Wall, which is known as the Dragon Head. We pulled into a parking lot that was buzzing with construction. This is the only part of the Great Wall that actually jets out into the ocean. It is called the Dragon Head because the main symbol of power in China is the dragon. Most sections of the Great Wall represents the body of a dragon. However, the part where the Great Wall reaches the ocean represents the dragon’s head taking a drink of water in the sea. After parking, we headed over to the ancient military barracks. In the barracks we saw a gigantic pot that the cooks used to make food for all of the soldiers. Then we saw a bunch of small scale models of military weapons that were used to defend and attack the Great Wall. There was a ladder used to climb walls, as well as two different types of battering rams. Outside, we saw some people dressed up as ancient Chinese soldiers. Apparently, they were filming for a movie about the Ming Dynasty. Unfortunately, we did not hear the name of it. After exploring the Dragon head, we bought some ice cream and departed to our next destination.

After a short drive, we arrived at our next location; the Shanghi Pass. The Pass is the only entrance in the Great Wall. This is the only way the enemies from the north could have taken over the Ming Dynasty. However, the entrance was extremely defended and almost impossible to penetrate. While hiking to the top of the pass, we stopped at a pond in which we could feed fish. Those fish were hyper and would jump out of the pond in the excitement of food. When we got to the top, we saw a giant drum that could be beaten 10 times for 1 yuan. Donny decided to do it. It was a really loud drum! Then, we went back down and headed to lunch, and afterwards we headed back to the hotel.

We got all of the materials required for our activities with the students tomorrow, as well as the gifts for the students. We then headed over to the area where we would set up the activities. We set up for tomorrow and wrapped our gifts for the students, and then we headed over to the same room in which we had breakfast. While we were walking to dinner, Donny had an incomplete idea for a horror story: for some reason, a man is walking on the beach ringing a bell. He asked everyone to think of ideas as to why the man was ringing the bell. At dinner the chefs made beautiful sculptures out of vegetables, and several people threatened to attack anyone who destroyed them. After dinner, we all went to our rooms to go to bed.

We finally are going to do what we came here for. We are going to put our experiments on display for 10 Chinese students and 5 teachers. We are all excited, yet nervous because we do not want to mess this up.

Written by Donny and Norman