I was up early...actually, I am up early every day (usually around 5:30am...which would be 3:30pm the day before in Canada). I think that there are several reasons for this, including:
1) there is no daylight savings time here, and so it is VERY bright in my apartment VERY early
2) I go to bed at about 9pm every night...I'm not sure why I am tired at this time...but basically there is no reason to fight it, so I generally go to sleep around this time.
3) there is A LOT of noise here - mostly car horns. In fact, if you received a dollar for every time someone honked a horn, you would very quickly become a millionaire. The big trucks have those loud horns, and seem to get on the roads early. Once this happens, the noise kicks into overgear, and it is like an alarm clock.
4) Lastly, I don't sleep very well as I seem to spend quite a bit of my nights worrying about stuff. Mainly, I am scared of getting sick and having to go to a local hospital for treatment. Gis told me that you do not want to have to do this, which of course, makes me worry about exactly that. This is further complicated by the fact that you are pretty much on your own....so no one (Heather, my Mom etc.) is there to help if you do get ill.
Therefore, I spend my nights stressing about what sickness I might be getting. For example, last week I was getting TOTALLY "itchy". In my active imagination, that meant that I had been bitten by bedbugs either here in Qinhuangdao, or at the hotel in Beijing...and that they were going to make me sick, and that I was going to have to go to the hospital for treatment (and very likely die there). Fortunately, I have since figured out that what I was doing was putting way too much soap in the machine when washing my cloths. I have since adjusted, and my itchiness has miraculously cleared up!
....or another time when I got some "China in my eye". I had some dust or something fly into my eye. It was really irritating and would not come out no matter what I did. Finally, I decided that it was going to scratch my cornea and that I would likely end up at the hospital and blind in the one eye......so, in the middle of the night I got up and totally flushed my eye out with tap water.
That seemed to work and I crawled back into bed....but then I starting stressing about using tap water to wash out my eye (NB: NOBODY drinks the water directly out of the tap here) and so I started worrying that my "tap water rinse" would infect my eye....and that of course, I would end up at the hospital, and blind in one eye again!
So I got up again, and totally flushed my eye out with Visene....and went back to bed. Then I started thinking about this, and thought while Visene might "get the red out", it was unlikely to cure the highly infection disease that was working away in my eye...and that I was still going to be blind!
So I got up again, and doused my eye with "the pink eye antibiotic solution"....finally satisfied that I would survive, I could finally go to sleep!!!!!! (and the happy news is that my eyes are fine - I did not have to go to the hospital and I did not end up blind)
Anyway.....a little of topic, so back to the nice, clear beautiful Sunday day!
I had been waiting for a nice clear day as I wanted to go to Jiao Shan. This was the fourth, and final, "Great Wall" site that I had hoped to visit while here (the other 3 were Old Dragon's Head, First Pass Under Heaven and Jiumenkou). However, in order to see Jiao Shan at it's best, you need a clear day. The reason for this is that Jiao Shan is also known as "First Peak", and is the first time the wall "climbs" a mountain. All the tour books talk about the spectacular views from this location, and as you can see from the pictures, this was true! It is a bit off the beaten path (70RMB cab fare each way from the college...and a little tough to find a cab when you want to leave...but you just have to be patient, one will come eventually - my wait was 45 minutes) but all in all, DEFINITELY well worth the time, effort and 30RMB entry fee.
I have now seen all four of the Great Wall sites that I had hoped to visit and can officially cross it off the to-do list....plus I also bought a Great Wall souvenir plate (for 25RMB or $3.57Cdn) but I'm not 100% sure it will pass the "Heather tackiness test"....it might end on display in the garage?
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