撒阿鹅叫快

(That doesn't mean anything. I just wanted a title in Chinese characters.)

China has been intense.

Several things have made it this way. First and foremost, there is a major language barrier here. For the first time in my life I can appreciate what it feels like not to speak the language everyone else around me does. Also, I have a newfound appreciation for Chinese people who learn to speak English because I'm pretty sure if I worked at it the rest of my life I couldn't speak Chinese. I keep trying to say "thank you" and it comes out sounding like a sneeze. However, we have been very lucky here in China to have Grace, my brother's college friend and possibly the world's best hostess/tour guide, to show us around and be our full time translator. (Last night, Grace left us on our own for the first time since the tragic train station arrival day. She told the taxi driver exactly where to go and sent us home. Within five minutes we were lost and certain we'd be sleeping on the streets of Beijing. So how do three clueless Americans find their way home with no Chinese? Laura recognized a KFC and of course we knew our way home from there. I think this pretty much makes us the ultimate Americans. We might as well have asked him to pull over and let us get some fried chicken.)

However, while Grace has seriously been, well, extremely gracious, she is also probably the most hard core tour guide I've ever met. I don't think there's anything left in the city or surrounding area of Beijing that I have not seen and/or learned about in the last few days. We have had early morning tours of Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City, late afternoon pedal boat rides around the summer palace, a quick stop by the new Olympic Stadium, nights out at popular expat bars, and more food than even I could manage to eat. It's been amazing. It's also worth noting that all of Grace's friends here are graduates of schools like Harvard or Princeton, they're all working on some version of a PhD or MBA and they all speak fluent Chinese. So I feel like a complete idiot pretty much all the time.

Today was an especially intense day. After getting back from random Beijing bars in the wee hours of the morning (including one that we accessed by crawling over a fence into a closed, dark park- something I never anticipated doing in a communist country) we had to be up at 5:15 a.m. to head to the Great Wall for a four hour hike. I almost died on that hike. I blame this partially on the pollution here in China. It's out of control. My eyes have been bloodshot, my lungs have been congested and my throat has hurt since we crossed the border. Beijing is so hazy it's hard to see more than a few buildings away at times. I will be very interested come August to see how Olympic athletes handle it. (Do you like how I just compared myself to an Olympic athlete? I mean, if you'd seen me on this hike today, I think you'd understand.) Anyway, it was a hard hike. 11 kilometers felt like about 111111 miles as it involved some serious stair climbing. But it was cool. And at the end we got to go on a zip line across a river so I liked that part.

Tonight is our final night of the trip. As a treat after our hike, Grace took us to a massage place where we got Chinese massages. Grace warned us before we went that occasionally traditional Chinese massages can be a little painful as they are all about pressure points. I said I could handle it. Grace, Laura and I were in the same room and somehow, of all of the masseuses in all of China, I got one who looked like she was a linebacker. Seriously, I don't know how it happened. My entire time in Asia I've felt freakishly large until this woman walked in tonight. I'm pretty sure she thought the point of the massage was to actually massage my internal organs through my back. At one point I thought I felt her rip my kidney out, but it was hard to tell. Anyway, hopefully it will keep me from being sore tomorrow.

Ah, tomorrow. The final day. Everett is flying out in the late afternoon and Laura and I leave in the evening. Laura is in a state of depression and while I'm sad that this trip is ending, the thought of squeezing Rosie in 48 hours makes me want to cry with joy. Ok, I'm ending this entry. Tomorrow I'll be writing the final one for the trip, but for now I have to go pack all my fake handbags and pirated DVDs.