So far everything has gone smoothly.  I realized as soon as we arrived that we were going to have to be ridiculously trusting on this trip, and yet so far that trust has been rewarded.  We were met at the airport by a large chinese man, who helped us get our money changed and told us we would have to relocate to a different hostel.  The hostel we are at is in a really good location though, and there are alot of fun people staying here from all over the world. 
 
Our first night we hung out in the "expensive" bar area.  There a beer caused us as much as 2.50 or 3 bucks.  Elsewhere we should be able to find beer for closer to a dollar.  Food is also cheap.  We ate our first chinese meal last night and it was so different than what we've had before and also so delicious.  So far we're really impressed with China.  Beijing has tons of live music and culturally interesting activities.  They have an english magazine or 5 and they list tons of activities, places to hang out, and other cool things to do.
 
Yesterday we walked 9km of the Great Wall of China.  We woke up around 6:40 in the morning and got on a bus with some other hostelers.  Our driver dropped us off in a farming village and told us we would need to hike to the wall, and then turn right and turn right again to get to our end point 9km away.  I was thinking 9km...easy.  What he didn't tell us is that that would be 9km of stairs!  Some of the women from the farming village accompanied us and told us which way to go, and held my hand (literally) through the icy difficult parts.  I must say it was very comforting to have someone take my hand and say "careful missus."  They spoke little english so mostly we did our thing and they chatted with eachother.  When we got to the halfway point they tried to sell us some books.  One of the hostelers bought some postcards and her guide went home.  The rest of us didn't want to buy anything, so our guides kept right along with us.  three quarters of the way we realized that they wouldn't go home unless we bought something (honestly I loved the hand holding so much that I would have just given her straight cash).  Without our guides it was a little lonely.  The wall is nothing like what you see in a documentary.  It's large and impressive yes, but the landscape is by far the most amazing part.  We were absolutely surrounded by beautiful mountains and in between these mountains could be seen chinese farms on one side of the wall and mongolian farms on the other.  We saw some mongolians walking in the opposite direction along the wall at one point.  Some points along the wall are so broken down we had to go around them but all in all, it was an impressive walk to be sure.  Our walk took us about 41/2 hours and took us past 28 towers.
I'm so glad we did it.
 
We don't have a solid plan for today.  We'll either hit the markets and art museums or we'll go to the forbidden city and tiennman square.  Either way we are hoping to see a chinese acrobatics show tonight.