Thursday - Beach Volleyball and Bye Bye Beijing

Thursday morning started with women's beach volleyball. Larry picked us these tickets for us and it was a great way to finish out our trip. We were very lucky and one of the USA teams just happened to be playing in the first match. It turned out to be the gold medal winning team of Walsh and May. It goes without saying that they won their match since they have now won something like 120 matches in a row or something ridiculous like that. The weather was gorgeous and it was very relaxing watching volleyball that morning. We also saw one of the Chinese teams play South Africa. No, it wasn't the same Chinese team that the USA played in the gold medal round. After watching two matches it was time to head back to the apartment for some lunch and to get ready to head to the airport.

When we planned our trip, I thought 8 days would be plenty of time to do the things we wanted to do. It wasn't even close. The Olympic events were great and we stayed busy the entire time we were there, but as we were packing I kept finding myself wishing for more time. Hopefully we will be able to make one more trip to China before Larry leaves. We want to go back and see all the non Olympic things Beijing has to offer.

Lauren, another couple freaky pictures for you. The first one shows what Larry affectionately called this the "Beijing Roll". Apparently anytime a man gets hot he just rolls up his shirt to cool off. If he gets really hot he will start rolling up the legs of his pants too.

Second freaky picture doesn't really need any explanation.

Wednesday - Baseball and BONUS!

Baseball was probably our least eventful event. The game was at the "B" stadium, which was not as nice of a venue and the game was a "B" game. It was Chinese Taipei vs Netherlands, so the teams were not necessarily anyone we cared about. And the game was a blow out with Chinese Taipei rolling over the Netherlands. On top of that it was hot out. Like... oven hot plus 90% humidity. And no, I'm not exaggerating. But we stayed and cheered with some Netherlands fans and enjoyed the atmosphere. The most exciting / nerve racking event of the morning was when Larry lost his work cell phone. Fortunately he found it at the security check point on the way out.

The second half of the day was much more exciting. Larry's boss had two tickets to the Women's basketball game that he wasn't going to use, so Wendy and I got to go see basketball while Larry and Zach had a boys night out. This was made even cooler by the fact that one of the basketball games was a USA game!

The first game was Australia vs. South Korea. Australia won and then Wendy got an autograph from Erin Phillips when the players came into the stands to watch the USA game. The USA played Mali. It started out pretty close but then turned into a blow out. Wendy had the entire section looking at her with her loud yelling and falling down the stairs (Don't worry, she was ok and some nice Chinese man helped her up).

The saddest thing of the night was when three basketball players from the USA men's team got louder cheers than the USA women who were playing. Pretty ridiculous considering the women were playing a fantastic game. The games ended about 1am and then we took the subway back to the apartment to start getting ready for our trip home.

Tuesday - Go USA or Kung Fu Fighting!

Ok, I'm still suffering from some jet lag and I have been up since 430am. I have been to Wal-Mart to do the weekly grocery shopping, fed and walked the puppy, and now I am sitting on the couch watching some Olympics, so I decided to catch up on some of my posts while I wait for everyone else in the house to wake up.
Tuesday August 12th started out with softball. One great thing about the Olympic tickets is that most of the tickets include more than one game. With the softball tickets we got two games. The first game was Canada vs. Chinese Taipei. Canada won this match 6-1. The second game was the one we were really excited for, USA vs. Venezuala. Considering when you buy the tickets you are just buying for a time slot and you don't know the teams you will get, we felt very fortunate to get to watch a USA game.
Jenny Finch was pitching and the USA team won by run rule at the end of the 5th, 11-0.. Larry bought us flags and scarfs at the embassy, so we were all decked out to support our women!

Lauren, here is one of the freaks that I was able to capture for you while I was gone. Who knew we would travel all the way to China to see the token Redneck.

It was exciting watching the game. These women are truly in a league of their own and will hopefully continue down the road to gold. As of this morning, they are still undefeated in preliminary games. Pretty amazing considering the round robin tournament requires them to play 7 games in 7 days. Go USA!

After an exciting day of softball we were off to an evening Kung Fu show that Larry booked for us. It was cool to watch, although it wasn't necessarily what we were expecting. It was less Kung Fu fighting and more artistic dancing / story telling. It was still pretty amazing to watch some of the fighting and dance moves the performers were able to do.

We finished the evening with a stop at Tian'amen Square to look at the lights. I still can't get over how amazing this area is considering not very long ago it was nothing more than a slab of concrete.

Oh, one thing I forgot to mention that became even more obviously while we were looking at the lights. We are all celebrities in China! Apparently people who looked like Wendy, Zach and I are fairly uncommon in China (who knew!) and we got asked to take pictures with perfect strangers all the time. Zach thought this was very weird but started to get used to it by the end of the trip. Here are some examples of this phenomenon.

I'll try to catch up with a post each day until I have summarized the entire trip. Hope you enjoy the pictures.

Pictures

Ok, here are all the pictures. You can view here by looking at the slideshows, click on an individual slide show to control the speed, or click on this link to view at your leisure.

Picasa Albums

Yes, there are a ton of pictures. What can I say, I'm trigger happy! :-)

Sightseeing



Olympic Boxing



Olympic Soccer



Olympic Softball - Canada



Olympic Softball - USA



Baseball



Basketball



Volleyball



Temple of Heaven



Forbidden City



Tian'amen Square



Great Wall



Misc.

Just one more day....

We are getting ready to have lunch and head to the airport,and all I can think is I wish we had just one more day here. Of course, if we had one more day I'd probably want another! We have had a fabulous time. I know I haven't posted many pictures, but I promise to get them up this weekend after we get home.

Larry, I can't thank you enough for everything you did to help make this a wonderful trip. Your planning and itenarary for us was wonderful. Hopefully we will be able to come again so we can see the non Olympic sites that we missed this time.

Overwhelmed

I think that best describes how all of us felt by the time we returned to Beijing this afternoon. It was quite the experience going to another city without Larry. He did a fabulous job arranging things for us. He hired a tour guide who was to meet us at the train station, take us to see the local sites, take us to the hotel, and then to the soccer match. Unfortunately when we got off the train the tour guide wasn't there. A few minutes of panic and a phone call to Larry later she found us and we were off on our adventure.

Lunch was.... an experience! The name of the restaurant was Golden Hans. Imagine Chinese people dressed up in German attire serving Chinese food from a buffet and roasted meat on a stick. Funny huh? Then apparently a beer comes with your meal, no matter how old you are because they brought three to our table. In case you are worried we didn't let Zach drink his.

Next we were off to the Great Wall. We got to see two different locations of the wall, one of which goes right to the water. It was amazing to see something that you have always heard about and has such a historical significance.



After going to the hotel long enough to freshen up a bit we were off to the soccer stadium! Our tickets turned out to be good for two games! The first was Camaroon vs. Honduras and the second was Italy vs. South Korea. Both games were really good, but the second one was more exciting because many South Koreans had traveled to watch their team play, so the atmosphere in the stadium was very exciting. Unfortunately for all of them, Italy won the match.

Our day today started with a traditional Chinese breakfast. I have to say, I am so proud of Zach and his willingness to try things since we have been here. Unfortunately most of the choices were more exotic that we were up for this morning, so we bought potato chips and soda at the train station. After the train ride home we went back to Tian'amen Square to take pictures of all the fantastic things they put in for the Olympics.



These creations are even more amazing when you consider this area was nothing but a slab of concert only three weeks ago.

Dinner tonight was the Chinese version of the Melting Pot. Althea, unfortunately they didn't have the chocolate dessert, but it was still pretty good. Now I am getting ready to head off to bed because we have softball tomorrow and if we are reading the schedule right, we get to see the USA team play! Larry bought us all flags and scarfs to show our support! Keep your fingers crossed for the USA softball team! I'll try to post more tomorrow.

Boxing!

So today was our first Olympic event. We went to the preliminary rounds of middle weight (six bouts) and light heavy weight class (seven bouts). It was so cool going into the Workers Indoor Stadium, the venue where the event wss held. They have hundreds of local citizens that have volunteered to work at the events and they are very well organized. This stadium is not new, but they did renovations on it to prepare for the games. It was exciting to see all the people and experience the atmosphere.

We got to see one USA boxer in the middle weight so that was awesome. He won his fight, so that was even better. We also got to see a Chinese fighter in the light heavy weight and it was very cool seeing the locals cheer for one of their athletes.

On the way to the games we stopped at a bank and Zach exchanged some money because he wanted to see what that was like. It was very cute watching him and it was nice to have Larry there to help us. All the locals are very intrigued that Larry speaks Chinese so well.

Souveniers at the events are very resonabily priced. I got a visor today for about eight dollars. Tomorrow we are heading to our soccer match, so I won't be able to post again until we return to Beijing on Monday. Hope all of you have a great weekend!

What day is it?

We have arrived safely in Beijing! Our trip went as smoothly as it could have possibly gone with all our flights on time and Larry waiting for us at the airport. We spent our first evening walking around some of the city close to where Larry lives. It was very interesting to see some of the more diverse areas. Katherine, I found a 7-11, but they don't sell slurpees. We had dinner at a local restaurant, dining on Beijing Duck and Spicy chicken. It was very good. Dinner for all four of us, plus beers for Wendy and Larry ran about $30, which Larry said was expensive because of the duck.

Friday morning we woke up early and went to Tian'anmen Square to watch them raise the flag, but we missed it by about 5 minutes. I think that I might try to get up early again tomorrow to watch. After that we took the subway to the Temple of Heaven. This is a beautiful park in the city that many local people go to exercise and basically just hang out. We got to play a game with some of the locals which was fun. Larry headed off to work and we finished wandering the park on our own.

After the Temple of Heaven we took the subway back to the Forbidden City. I had no idea how hung of an area this was. There are bunches and bunches of beautiful buildings to tour through. Towards the end there was a garden that you could relax in. While inside this area it was hard to believe that you are in the middle of a city with 14 million people. Actually, probably many more than that right now with the Olympics going on!

Leaving this area turned out to be a challenge because the police had several areas of the street blocked off, so we couldn't just walk back to our subway. We took a city bus past one blocked area, but then ran into another one. At that point we decided to take a cab back to the apartment. Thankfully Larry had given us instructions to tell the cab driver how to get us home!

Now we are back at the apartment, getting ready to have a snack, take a swim in the pool and prepare for an evening of opening ceremony events! Tomorrow is our first Olympic event! We are going to the boxing match at 1300.

Leave me a comment if you have any questions you want answered from here in the wonderful city of Beijing.

Hectic

That pretty much sums up the last two weeks. I know it has been forever since I posted. Between work, home and a quick trip to Kansas time has flown by. I'll try to catch you up with the Cliff Notes version.

Two weekends ago (July 16th) we had our last baseball game. Coaching was a blast, but I'm really glad its over for a few weeks. The tournament didn't go very well, which is to say we lost all four games, but hopefully the fall season will go better. Zach's Grandma and Grandpa came to watch his game, then he went home with them after the game. This was a nice break for us and we took advantage of it by going to see Wanted and then had a date night. It turned out to be a really nice night out. We went dancing at a local club and a bunch of our friends wound up coming too, which was a nice suprise.

Last weekend Zach and I drove to Kansas for my high school reunion and to see my Mom. The reunion was.... I don't know really how to explain it. There were a few people there that I enjoyed catching up with, but I kinda of felt like a third wheel. I'm not the best person as far as initiating conversation and going up to people, so I felt a little uncomfortable and out of place. I realize that I spent a lot of time hiding behind a camera in high school and while it got me through that time, it didn't help me talk to anyone over the weekend.

Crap... I have to run to the end of season baseball pool party. I'll finish this thought later.