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8/15/2008 |
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OLYMPICS 2008 |
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Friday, August 15
Well, Brad and I are a bit bummed. Both Federer and Serena Williams lost and we had tickets to see them both. That is disappointing. Now off to Ping Pong!
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Who would think watching ping pong would be exciting...but this is loads of fun. 4 tables whacking away at once...one table womens doubles, one mens doubles, women singles...men singles. Just saw crowd go wild when men single Hong Kong player beat Taipei. (Hong Kong recognized fully as China, Taiwan not). Now Hong Kong player returns for a doubles match again against Taipei. Keep you posted on this nail biting sport.
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It was a nice day all around. We woke up to a beautiful sunny day and not too hot. Got the coffee going, ate a little cereal and called my honey to wish her a last Happy Birthday. This certainly was the first and hopefully the last of Nancy's birthdays that we were apart. Our girls were getting ready to take her out to dinner.
After breakfast Brad and I took a cab over to Beijing University (truly the Harvard of China) where the Ping Pong Arena has been built for the Beijng 2008 games. Another stunning building and fun to be greeted by the numerous "Bei Da" (Beijing Daxue...or univerisity) students, China's brightest. The ping pong was brisk and remarkably fun. We taxied back to our house just in time to meet my oldest son, Ben, who flew up for a visit. We scootered over to a favorite Middle Eastern restaurant for lunch, then came back and chilled for a while.
Ben and I worked on a project of his and Brad worked out. Then we cabbed it to the new Terminal 3 of the airport and hopped the airport subway to Sanyuanqiao Subway transfer to the Number 10 train which takes you to the Olympic Subway transfer. As we walked to catch our subway to the games, we ran into a large group of my Beijing friends, who all by the way are from Dallas. Jeff and Holly Beier (Holly taught Bonner our youngest daughter at Providence Christian School), along with Gabriel and Julie Schultz and his parents and siblings. It always seems like such a small world. Son Ben and I went to the Cube...2nd time for me and a 1st for him. The architecture at the Olympics here doesn't get old...it is breathtaking to see at night. When we had seen enough swimming...several heats of mens' 1500 meter and womens' 4 x 100's relay, we walked until we caught a cab that brought us home. Ben was tired, so he excused himself to bed. I took the opportunity to walk to my favorite spot for a foot massage...good way to end a great day.
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Adding one last thing. When Ben and I got to the Olympic park tonight we were very hungry. Do you think one could get a cold beer and a hamburger? Well you can get a cold beer...Yanjing (made in Beijing) but absolutely no burger. Instead you have a choice of roma noodles or rice and beef chunk dinners (both pre-packaged). We both opted for the rice and beef. They handed us our styrofoam package and told us to take them over to these two helpers for them to heat and prepare our meal. We handed these two young chinese our packages which they unwrapped and then they carried them over to a stand up table for us. Protruding from one end of this styrofoam case was what appeared to be a plastic draw string. They pulled the string and told us to wait 10 minutes, it would self heat. And indeed it did...in a few minutes time this room temperature package began to steam and spew and within the 10 minute time frame it completely cooked. When I took the lid off it was steaming hot. I have never seen anything like it. The dinner was about like you would expect, not great...but the experience was interesting. Of course I did wonder to myself exactly what just happened...what chemicals just mixed to make this heat and did I ingest something that would make me glow in the dark? Oh well, when in China, do what the Chinese do...eat rice.
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posted time 9:39:34 AM |
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