Following in the footsteps in my elder brother John, I, too, am going to the Great Wall. I booked tickets for my girlfriend and myself for a 5 day trip to Beijing beginning this Saturday. In addition to the Wall, we’ll also see Tiananmen Square, The Forbidden City, the Summer Palace and the Temple of Heaven. We’re on a package tour, so we’ll have to follow the guy with the flag to keep from missing the bus everywhere we go. I’m not fond of guided tours, but it was cheap. We do have a free day to explore parts of Beijing on our own and we’re still trying to decide what else we should see.

MyeongHee has never been out of the country or even on a plane, so she’s both excited and nervous. Last weeks’ Brazillian plane crash didn’t help. We’re on a tour primarily for English speakers here in Korea, so I might be having to do some translating for her. She understands quite a bit, but not when they talk fast. I’ll bring my English/Korean dictionary, which also does a nice job on Chinese – it even speaks phrases in Chinese.  That might come in handy on our free day. She doesn’t speak Chinese, but like all Korean students, she had to learn Chinese characters in school and she reads fairly well.  That was pretty much the deciding factor on where we’d go for a vacation – neither of us spoke or read Japanese. All the other places in Asia we considered we’re pricey just to get to. Asia is big. Real big.

I won’t spend any time blogging while we’re there, so I’ll save my pictures and video for when I come back.