Day 12

I was supposed to do more surveying today, but I decided not to bother. I woke up around 10:30am instead. Really didn't do too much, I tried to make lunch around 1pm only to find that we had no gas (that would explain my incredibly cold shower).
I went to the meeting point at 2:30pm to go to the gymnastics event. After taking the subway we got there pretty early and found our seats. I was in the second to last row, but it was a small venue and I couldn't complain after yesterday.
Every event was a medal final, Rings, Uneven bars, and men's Vault. China won the first two and didn't compete in the last event. It was weird because in the bars and the vault the top score was tied, but they somehow worked it out into first and second without OT (or w/e it would be in gymnastics). Another thing that I never realized was that you only get one shot in most gymnastics events, so if you screw up or someone after you does better, there's nothing you can do. At the end, there was an extra event, women's Trampoline final! This wasn't part of the program, but we got to see it anyway. It was really fun and China won that too. Last time I checked they had 39 Golds!
After the event we walked around and saw them filming for the Today show. We went home and got ready to go out. I brought some new people with me and we had a really big group. I don't know why, but there were tons of athletes out last night. I even got to see a gold medalist w/ his gold around his neck! There were rumors that there were swimmers in China Doll, but we didn't check it out. At Kokomo they started doing the limbo and I managed to break my flip flop in the process. We stayed out until 4:30am and got home in one piece (minus the flip flop).

Day 11

So the Dumpling dinner was amazing, regardless of the fact that they didn't have fried dumplings.
I woke up early to get to the meeting point for volunteering at 8am. I was hoping to get a ticket to something or get out of doing surveys, no such luck. We went to Casa America to try and get some people to fill out surveys. After giving up on that, we had some food and then hung around for a while.
I went to the Silk Market and shopped around for a few things. I also decided that it was worth the effort to get a suit made. I got the best quality they had in a really nice light grey for 1200 RMB, or about $170.
At 3:30 I met up with people to go to the Athletics event. When we finally got there it was incredible. The buildings are beyond imagination and we had FIRST row tickets. The only people in front of us were the press photographers. We witnessed a world record, the 100m medal ceremony, and tons of other incredible feats. I got home around 12:45am, which was weird because the subways were supposed to be closed since 11pm.
I took over 200 pictures and ran out of space on my memory card, thank god I brought my laptop with me.

Day 10

Finally, a current post.
I've been lying here pumping all these posts out and now we're in the present. We got up around 11 this morning and skipped the Summer Palace. It's an all day thing and we are still sore from yesterday. We went to Wan Fu Jing street to buy stuff and bargain.
We went to the Olympic Flagship store, which was a mad house, and then the night street, where I ate scorpion (yes, you read right) and got a few key gifts. I think I'm set for gifts except for 1 or 2 things.
We have a dumpling dinner tonight, someone needs to warn the restaurant that I'm coming.

P.S. I got an email confirming and detailing my job offer for Freddie Mac!

Day 9

Two temples in one day, lots of walking.
We did the Temple of heaven first. The temple itself wasn't fantastic, but there were hundreds of people doing tai chi, singing, dancing, playing cards, it was one of my favorite parts of the trip! It was awesome to see the culture at such a ground level.
We went to the pearl market after, but nothing really relevant for me (you could pay $20 to open a mussel and keep the pearls inside, if there were any).
After that it was the Lama temple, lot of incense and the world's largest buddha, 18m. We even had a leader of Taiwan there, who was visiting the temple with about 20 of his entourage. I took a nap after in anticipation of a big party night and I guessed right, I came home at 6am.

Day 8

WATER POLO!!!!
We left at 10:30am and after lots of walking got to the Natatorium (across the street from the Bird's Nest). We couldn't go in for a few hours, so we took advantage of the 5 RMB beers. It started to rain just as we were going into the event.
Being a player, was explaining what was going on to everyone and they thoroughly enjoyed how rough water polo is. China played last and even though they lost by 10, it was the most exciting because of the crowd (and we were pretty drunk).
We came home just in time for Hot Pot dinner, which is like a fondue, but with a stew. There were all kinds of interesting things to eat (I only ate from the spicy pot), many of which they had a hard time explaining.

Day 7

I had nothing scheduled until the evening, so I was volunteering at 1pm. Our leader, Tom, went to a meeting and told me that I had to go early, i.e. right away. I went to the meeting point and then we were off to the airport to help pick people up for a travel company.
We were in the new, massive terminal and got some coffee and something to eat. We had spicy Thai food with mushrooms in it, which I ate, and the chili's were so hot that I was crying. I felt really good after though. We stood around and luckily there were huge screens with the gymnastics on, so the time went by a little quicker. We were there until 3pm, taking the taxi back.
At 5pm we had a special dinner with performances and activities. Some of the volunteers showed their musical talents, one being a fantastic opera singer.
I was with a new group and we decided to go out to the Holland House! I went home (after almost peeing my pants I had to go so badly) and took a taxi, with much difficulty, to the House. It was a fantastic experience and the house was enormous. I met some people from the program there and chatted w/ new zealanders and tried my dutch out w/ a few people. We went out afterwards, but apparently the 2 girls I was with had no sleep the past few days and we were home by 4am

Day 6

We had to get up extra early for the Great Wall because it took about 3 hours to get there (my roommates had a little too much fun the night before and couldn't get up). We took the subway to the bus and eventually got to the wall around 11:30am. There was a big market before you got to the wall and I was starving so I searched for food. I found a chinese pancake (like a crepe and an omelet together) place and overpaid because everything is expensive and I feel weird bargaining for food.
We took a cable car up to the wall and the girls I was with kept freaking out when the car shook. We got to the wall and the view was incredible! We decided to meet back at 1pm, giving us 1 hr to look around. I proceeded to get as far away from people as possible and make it as far down the wall as I could, taking pictures along the way. I managed to find a section with no one on it, it was slippery with moss and I almost ate it a few times. I made my way back and was sweating profusely, along with everyone else.
It took a while to get off the wall because the entrance is very small and people keep pouring in. There were a lot of school kids, one group of girls were wearing pink and throwing their hats in the air, luckily they did it again and I managed to snag a National Geographic-like photo. We came back and were exhausted, sleeping nice and early.

Day 5

We had the Forbidden City at 8:30, so it was off to the meeting point. We took the subway out to Tienanmen Square and started taking pictures of everything.
This place was huge! It just kept going and going. People used to spend their entire lives within the walls of this place. The Forbidden City was at the back of the square.
There were so many interesting things to take pictures of and the angles of all the buildings, etc. gave me plenty to keep me busy.
The last section was a garden and it was gorgeous. I could've spent hours taking photos, but we were all pretty hungry and tired, so we decided to find somewhere to eat.
We found a bustling dumpling restaurant and had to fight to get a table. We had a wide variety to choose from and even got some other dishes, including tofu. Now I'm not the biggest fan of tofu, but I had to try it. I was really surprised at how smooth and soft it was and am now quite the fan!
After lunch, we went to a park with a huge lake and went out on paddle boats for an hour.
We made it home around 4pm and lazed for a while. At 7pm we had our Duck dinner which was within walking distance. The table was round and had a huge lazy susan that took up most of it. We had a lot of different dishes including sole, black chicken soup (which I asked for), duck, etc. The weirdest thing was that you eat the duck in a tortilla with sauce, cucumber, and shallots, kind of like a taco. We rolled home after eating way too much food and went to sleep.

Day 4

I got up early to get to the meeting point for my volunteering assignment. The meeting point is for everything, so if they you for something else, you might end up doing something different. Anyway, I wasn't looking forward to it because one of the main volunteering assignments was doing surveys.
I got to the meeting point and Steve, the director of the program, was there. He was talking to two of my friends about the blog and said to spend the day getting it up and running. I was stand close by and was hoping I could do the same. Luckily, she mentioned my name and we spent the rest of the day blogging and watching events, instead of giving surveys. I also created a facebook group so that people could upload pictures, etc.

Catch Up

I am aware that I have fallen behind on my blog for the past couple days. I they have been keeping me nice and busy lately, but I promise I will put up details for each past day as soon as possible.

P.S. Water Polo was awesome!!!

Day 3

We woke up for our meeting at 11:30 to organize our schedules. We signed up for trips to the great wall, summer palace, forbidden city, lama temple, and the temple of heaven. We also signed up for a duck, dumpling, hot pot, and traditional chinese dinner.
We also got our tickets for Olympic events and organized around them. There was some switching and I got a later water polo event so I could go with a friend. We also got a volunteer shirt and a bag to carry some stuff around in.
After the meeting, we hung around for a while and tried to make it to a market. We ended up in a mall and had lunch. We found a store that sold ridiculous jade ornaments, one was going for around $100,000. They were even trying to sell us stuff!
We went to dinner at a hong kong style restaurant with Pete's TA from Pitt who lives in Beijing. I have to say that I LOVE the food and dining style here in China. It's really social and all the food is fantastic. We had really interesting noodles and a frog dish as well (and dumplings). We usually order 3-5 dishes and share them between the group, why can't we do this everywhere?!
After dinner we bought some beer and just drank it in someone's apartment until around 3:30am. When we got home we found Pete in my bed and his bunk in shambles. It had broken when he sat in it and he had to move to mine. Lucky it's a big bed and I had no problems keeping space and sheets between us.

Day 1 & 2

Day 1

I arrived in the new airport terminal and was met by 3 chinese students. We took a bus to the other terminal to pick someone else up. After a good amount of time on the Subway, we made it to the forest of apartment buildings.

We waited for a key and then went up to the 28^th (top) floor. The apartment was clean, but hot and was missing a few things. We needed keys, internet, food, water, and more beds. I was the first one in the apartment to arrive. I sat around as a small army of Chinese fixed and cleaned everything.

I decided to go downstairs to see if anything was going on and my timing was perfect because a group of about 30 people had just arrived for the program. My friend Peter from Pitt was in the group, so I took him up to our apartment. We hung out for a while and waited for the third person to arrive while still putting everything together.

Derek, the third guy, arrived a little later and we found out that our leader, Thomas, wouldn’t be arriving until tomorrow. We hung around and then went to another building to someone’s apartment to go out for the night.

After looking for a while, we found the apartment and found that it was huge, with 10 people living in it. We collected everyone and went out to the main bar strip. We decided to meet up at Shooter’s, but no one told us specifically where it was. We probably did 3 massive circles before we found it. The night was really fun, running into random people from the program. One interesting thing that happened was at a place called Disco Pub. This place was great, playing my kind of music. There were poles on the stage, so eventually a dancer showed up. It was entertaining, nothing too raunchy. When the girl was done, a guy took the stage! We didn’t dare to look, but the funny part was that he was really good. He put the girl to shame. It was awkward, but funny as hell. The rest of the night was a few more bars and me messing up my knee on a railing. We got home around 5am.

Day 2

We woke up around noon because someone was knocking on the door. After talking for a while, we lazed around and eventually went out to eat at 2pm. We ordered 4 different dishes, all spicy, except for the dumplings. There was a vege dish, pork, and fish (which they brought out to us before they started). All I have to say about real Chinese food is amazing! Everything was delicious. The pork dish was pork belly, I’m pretty sure, and it was incredible. It was soft and spicy and just melted in your mouth. The fish was really good, but really bony. They forgot about our dumplings, but we didn’t really need them. After lunch we had a meeting about the opening ceremony and what we were doing.

We left for the ceremony at 6pm (Thomas arrived just as we were leaving) and made our way with our Chinese guide to a massive park. We went to a viewing stage, which is two massive screens setup in a square for Beijingers to watch the events. It was really full and the ceremony started at 8pm sharp. The first part was awesome, but sitting through all the countries, etc. was boring. We also hadn’t eaten anything else, so we were really hungry.

After it finally ended around 12:30am, we found our group of party goers from last night and decided to go back out. We spent about 20 min trying to hail a cab, and eventually gave up and took the subway. We met up in a Mexican bar and I immediately ordered a large burrito. One of the other guys ordered quesadillas, which came out rather quickly. After waiting 20 min, we asked about our food to find out that the kitchen said they had served us already. We were pissed, we hadn’t eaten in 9 hours and I wanted to kill the waiter. After being adamant about not getting our food, it finally came out. These burritos were huge, putting even chipotle to shame (only on size though). I finished mine and the other two stared in amazement. We left the bar and ran into everyone, then going to bar blu. I wasn’t in the mod to drink, being really full but still pissed off. After a beer, we decided to go home and sleep.

Day 0

We left the house in the Miata so that we would use less gas. Not really a lot of leg room so I had to engineer my knees so that something didn’t fall asleep. In the process, I managed to fall asleep for a while. We finally made it to the Princeton Junction and I went in to get a ticket.

In line, the girls in front of me asked the same question repeatedly because the tickets have about seven letters on them and aren’t very detailed. I got my ticket once they were done, $11.75. I went back to the car to get my stuff and say bye to Mom. Carolyn called me and we talked about the previous night and how she’d woken up at 3:40pm. Many deep conversations were had that unfortunately got lost in the white Russian haze.

After an Acela train flew by, mine showed up. I got on the car to find no air-conditioning, not good. I sat in the heat until the conductor came by and said that the next car was conditioned, I might have ran him over a little. I was sitting by myself for a majority of the trip, but once we got to Penn Station in Newark (not NY yet) two of the largest human beings I’ve ever seen decided to squeeze into my seat. They were married and both were at least double my weight, if not more. Anyway, we made it to Penn Station and I proceeded to look like a lost bunny rabbit for a good ten minutes.

Eventually I figured it out (despite the lack of good signs) and went into the basement, which housed the subway. I found a Subway and got a meatball sub. I got it toasted and decided I would eat it after I got off the subway (haha, subway on the subway), dumb idea. I stumbled onto the right platform and my train was just arriving, the timing of all this was perfect which would’ve been great if I didn’t have the entire day to get to the airport (all the while I’m grinning from ear to ear because the randomly placed songs on my shuffle are fantastic). After a long while, we got to the JFK stop.

I got off, found a seat, and inhaled half of my somewhat soggy but still warm delicious sub. I went upstairs to the Airtran and got a Metrocard for $5 to get through. I waited 5 min and the train showed up.

I made it to the check in counter only to find that Asiana didn’t have one, yet. They only opened at 8:30pm; it was 7pm (damn the good timing). I went downstairs, finished the other half of my sub and read more of “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” (I will finish this book before I come back). I came back up to the counter around 8:10 to find a short line for my flight; I guess other ppl like to be really early. It was mostly families and they had a ton of checked bags. I got my ticket, called, spoke to dad for a little, and then went through security. Why is it that no matter how many times ppl are told, they don’t take off their shoes or jackets or anything else? There was also an Indian woman who would not stop waving goodbye to her family, it just got annoying after they were having 100ft conversations and she kept jumping around in line. I got through and after deciding not to have a beer earlier, I get to my gate to find a Brooklyn Brewery at my gate. I give in and have a Pilsner for $7.38; expensive, but really good stuff. I drink it slowly and listen to conversations around me. As I’m leaving three Russians order shots of Smirnoff. After the bartender pours the pathetic $8.40 shots, they ask for doubles and water, how much more Russian do you get (their bill was $50 for 3 drinks). I paid the bartender and just left him the change, not in a big tip mood. Now here I sit in this hard chair next to the gate, listening to music for the soundtrack of August Rush, which is fantastic (the movie and the music). If you want to hear something amazing w/ a guitar, listen to Bari Improv by Kaki King, but the entire album is worth it. Well, I have an hour and 40 min before we board, so I might try to brush up on the dismal Chinese skills that I have. Haha, never mind, my podcasts are saved to my computer and there are 13 of them. Oh well, I’ll just pick up the language while I’m there, lol.

Ciao!

P.S. Does a 7 hr layover qualify as being in a country if I go outside the airport?

And the journey begins

So I'm off to Beijing today!
It's going to be a long trip to China, about 30hrs from my door to the beijing airport. I can't get excited until I get through immigration, customs, etc. But the minute I know I'm there and let loose on the Olympics, my blood is going to boil with adrenaline.
I will be taking my laptop with and will make a conscious effort to write in this blog everyday and post all my pictures.

Next time you hear from me I'll be on the other side of the world!