Great Wall Marathon Part 1

At 3:40 we were in the van headed to pick up Fredy at work.  We had to pick up Mr. Singer (Cameron's teacher) who we found lying under a tree at Warner sleeping.  He tried to get in the back of the van but Ileana wouldn't let him.  She told him to sit in the front seat.  It was very obvious he did not want to sit there but he did.

We got to the factory and again Mr. Singer asked if he should move to the back.  Ileana told him no she was going to the back and Fredy would sit in her seat.  I could tell he was not happy again.  She is funny.

We were on the road to Jixian, Tianjin.  The Great Wall Marathon was happening this weekend.  We arrived at the Huangyaguan section of The Great Wall.  Leo stopped to ask a couple people where our Hostels were.  We found Mr. Singers first.  We said our goodbyes and went to find our Hostel.

We arrived but they needed a receipt before we could go to our room.  We had to go back down to where we dropped off Mr. Singer.  Come to find out all people staying in Hostels needed to check in there.  We got our receipt and went back to the Hostel.  It was half way up the hill we were going to be running the next day. 

Fredy and Ileana getting our receipts.

We gave the girl our receipts and she took us to our rooms.  Two rooms had 3 twin beds in them.  One room had a twin and a double bed.  Carrasco's picked one of the rooms with 3 beds.  It had a door that went out to a balcony though.  I chose the one across the hall from them.  The other girls were in the last room.  The rooms were much nicer than we had thought.  They were clean and smelled good.  The funny part was the bathroom though.  There was a sink, squatty potty, and a shower head hanging on the wall.  Never have I stayed somewhere with a squatty potty.  Interesting to say the least.  And there wasn't toilet paper.  Luckily we realized that before Carrasco's driver left.  They had a new box of Kleenex in their van. 

Trying to figure out what time to tell Leo to be back in the morning.

The bathroom. 

My room.

Wow, fancy.

We hung out on the balcony for a bit and then went down to wait for the girls.  They arrived and we showed them to their room.  They were cracking up laughing when they saw the bathroom.  We hadn't eaten yet so we did that while Erica, Megan, and Andrea went walking around outside. 

Fredy was surprised my the nice Honeymoon Suite.

Ileana got a lift from Fredy.

The girls have arrived.

Megan, Andrea, and Erica checking out the bathroom.

Ileana and I were in the girls room talking.  They were really beginning to freak me out.  The conversation was about how they always have to poo on long runs.  They had me thinking I might poo my pants somewhere between 4-13 miles.  Yikes!  These girls are so funny.

Megan either doing aerobics or showing us her
sweatbands that her kids made for her to wear.

We all went to our own rooms at 9:00 to get ready for bed.  We had to catch a bus at 5:30 a.m. to take us to the square for the Marathon.  I grabbed an extra comforter to put on my bed.  It was like sleeping on concrete. The pillow was rice or rocks or something very hard.  I shut the lights off and laid down.  Holy hardness.  Decided to use my sweatshirt on top of my pillow to help.  Outside some Chinese Karaoke started up.  Oh great.  Loud and not good.  It finally stopped at 10:30. 

My running gear was ready.

The view from my window.

I was up a lot during the night.  I finally thought to use my towel for a pillow and fold the two comforters in half to make it a little more comfy.  It helped a little but the bed was still hard.  Saturday morning at 4:15 I was wide awake.  That was fine since my alarm was going to go off at 4:30 anyway.