These photos was taken on the third day of our trip at the Great Wall of China, outside of Beijing. The Great Wall was initially built during the time of the first emperor, but was rebuilt during the Ming Dynasty. The Wall today is 13,171 miles long, and my group spent about 3 hours climbing up and back down a section of the wall. The steps were pretty steep and varied in sizes so it made it very difficult to climb. But during on ascension, we met many people from all around the world that also came to climb the wall of China outside of Beijing. It also gave us time to bond with the students that I had just met on the trip. I also bought a beautiful wall scroll from a store during the path. We were able to reach the top and back within three hours.

Afterwards we travelled back to Beijing and went to the Bird’s nest, the stadium built for the 2008 Summer Olympics. We learned about how the building was engineered and the history of it. Finally we travelled to Silk Road where we were able to go shopping for goods. It was the first time we saw how merchants were like outside of the United States. The idea of bargaining was pretty difficult for me to master. I needed a lot of help haha. But it was interesting to compete over the value of items with the merchants, especially not speaking the same language.

Joel Sakyi