sam, guess ill keep trying.

so now i am actually writing in accordance to time. that last post was out of place. just some scribbles formulated into a thing.

it is my third day in china. i just returned from camping on the great wall. it was a very good way to start off whatever this journey is or will be. i love the great wall. it is the greatest thing i have ever seen and the second time around was no exception. it blows minds. go and see it.

this time around jeff, ellie, jake, and i went to this sort of deserted portion of the wall. we drove up and paid this guy to let us sneak in the back way. we then commenced to climb up the most obnoxious hill path ever with stupidly heavy packs. it was the most grueling exercise i have endured in quite some time. sweat and sat sweat and sat sweat and sat. hooray reached the wall. this part of the wall is covered in growth. dead trees/bushes grew out of the wall everywhere. this is not how i first played with the wall.

the first time i went to the cleaner touristy renovated side where there is no growth on the wall. both are great. mountains are all over and the view is consistently punching you in the stomach. you can just see the wall going and going and going and going. never ending. so we walked along the wall and found a little spot where the wall broke out. there was space on the wall for jeff and ellies love shack and there was space next to the wall for jake and i's bachelor pad. it was cold and getting dark, but we succeeded in setting up and eating before all that night thing happened.

we brought an immensity of food in classic mom form. she really likes making her children fat. loves it lives for it. our little fat faces chewing and smiling and laughing food bits out of our mouths makes her dreams come true. we were advised through gibberish chinese at the outset of our journey not to have a fire, but camping is impossible, especially in the winter, without a fire. so we said f that to the gibberish chinese man and built a little fire ring from debris stone from the great wall, no bigs, and had a little fire. boy was it dry up there, but we were careful and succeeded! flying middle fingers to the chinese, sorry.

we had some wine and chatted by the fire about a variety of thingy doo dads. college being stupid, jakes relation to that, my own, jeffs, mommy, who luckily never had anything to do with that bag of shit, sat there laughing at us. talked about family, she is really good at that. jeff talked about optimism, which he is very good at. we got a little buzzed up and reached that good old peak.

jake and i decided to climb up the wall a bit to check out this awesome overlook we spotted earlier. it is chinese newish year so fireworks are perpetually being launched and we could see a few towns from this part of the wall. it was magical watching these two separate towns launching mortars that we could make out. jake and i talked about our futures, it was nice. we are both very confused, but confident and hopeful. tried to explain my way of thinking a bit, he already knows so he just supported me and laughed a lot.

he surprises me with his sense of humor. it is one of my favorites. this is our blog so ill let him spit out a bit of our jokes if he is interested, i am not. you can imagine what it was like. getting bored of writing so the ending will be swift. slept like shit cause it was boombastically cold. jake is a great brother and made me warm while he suffered. woke up and all of our shit was frozen so we bailed. the walk down took a tenth of the time it took to get up.

the beginning of the trail was this old run down former hotel. tourists dont like grueling death hill hikes, cant blame em. the other wall has a ski lift type thing so you can wear your high heels on the great wall. YAY! WINK! HIGH FIVE! there was this really cool former pool/pond. wished i could have been there when it was a functioning hotel. there was also this pond with this beautiful bright green water plant all up in it. it was great to look down on from the stupid hill. the only real splash of color in the dreary snowless cold china winter. drove home, started siddhartha again. all our water had froze and jake and i had grown tired of eating ice so we finally reached a store and i drank a whole bottle of orange juice in one drink then casually drank water. ta da! i am back home in their beautiful house. video/pictures to come as well as jake flavoring. keep reading and write me if you want ;-P