What? Shannon, an English teacher?: The Great Wall's Disappearing Act

As you can tell from the previous post, I had some friends visiting me last week! We had a good time and did a lot of things, including a trip to the Great Wall on my birthday! The section of the wall that I take my visitors to is called Huang Ya Guan in Jixian and it has quickly become one of my favorite places in China. It is a large section of the wall that can be hiked across; full of ups and downs, watchtowers, renovated parts of the wall along with the ancient sections and it takes about 3 hours to hike across it. The best part about this section of the wall is that the air is fresh and there are virtually NO people there - unlike the rest of China! It's amazing to be at this great landmark of history, trying to imagine what it was like to build it, sleep in the watchtower or stand guard at one of the thousands of viewing points.

This past week, though, I've seen something that I have not witnessed in my 3 previous trips. The wall was gone! The mountains surrounding the wall were gone, the watchtowers were gone and, on a few occasions, my friends were gone! All of this had disappeared into a cloud of...well, a cloud... It was one of the foggiest days I have ever seen and my friends can testify that I almost burst into tears when we got to the top and were unable to see the beautiful sights. At one point Dietrich climbed a small slope about 15 feet from us and we lost him completely. At that moment we decided that our imagination would be useful in a situation like this and we made the best of the fog, actually having a wonderful time! By the end of our hike, the fog had lifted a bit and we could see the outline of the wall. Check out the pictures below to see that yes, the Great Wall of China may be seen from space and may be able to keep out invaders but match it up against a cloud and it's certain to lose...