After avoiding a starfish/sea horse/scorpion breakfast we found ourselves on a bus headed north out of Beijing.

Two hours later we found ourselves here. Yes, the Commune by the Great Wall. It’s in the middle of no where and yet, still very cool (literally and figuratively).  After finding our respective houses/rooms, we took off for lunch and a quick hike up to the great wall.  Given Commune is located a bit off the beaten path, we were lucky enough to have a small section of the wall all to ourselves.

Needless to say, it was beautiful.

Not so beautiful? Me dancing.

As promised, shortly after our hike down from the wall we began to practice the samba. After being offered a choice between the smoke machine or bubbles for our performance (Are we taking this a bit seriously?) we spent the next few hours practicing and preparing for the performance.  Once we were moderately sure we would not completely embarrass ourselves, we changed into the performance costumes and off we went!

In the end it wasn’t too bad and went by very quickly. Still, we weren’t as good as some of the other offices who had hired professional choreographers from Russia (again with the taking a company skit too seriously!). Following our performance we were lucky enough to settle into some very good Chinese food and win a few awards.  I also got to take off the rubber Geisha wig which was probably the best moment of the night – for me at least. And no, there were no pictures of that I will share. The only chance you may have at seeing me in the outfit would be if a certain industry magazine picks up the photos they took and given how well my translucent white skin looks up against yellow fabric, I’m guessing that’s going to be a no.

All in all, it was a lot more fun than we could have ever anticipated.

Sadly, we only stayed at Commune one night before a 5:30 car picked us up to return us to the airport.

Little did we know what the next day would entail…