Home at last

We are home. It is 1:12 a.m. this time. With a little sleep, we have been awake for a long time. Traveling back from China, through Toronto, takes a long time. We had to go through customs in Canada, the wait was about three hours to get it all done. We have lots of stories and pictures for everyone to see. I hope you logged into shutterfly to see our photos posted on the web. We will bring you additional news as we go through the rest of the games from stateside.

Rick and Christina

Last Day

We will soon be on our way back to the states. We arrive at 11 p.m. on the same day we leave Beijing. Funny about the time change. We have many stories to tell anyone who is interested in hearing about the trip to Beijing 08. This is my fifth Olympics and they were very different from the past games in several ways. Nothing tops your first games, so Barcelona ranks up the highest for me, but we can talk about this one for hours.

Christina did have to go shopping this morning. We are bringing back two extra suitcases. See you soon.

Rick and Christina

China Fast Food

Today was our last full day in Beijing. We did not have tickets to an event, so we decided to do some other things that were on our list of "to do's," starting with shopping of course. Christina was in charge of the morning so that is what we did. We "had" to go back to the silk market and do some more buying/shopping/bartering. Many of the vendors are wearing lanyards with pins on them, so we can trade our pins with them. It is also a great place to meet people from all over the world since it is a popular tourist stop. You see many of the Olympic athletes and the coaches there if they are done with their competition.

After shopping we met our friend from the hostel and his girlfriend. Adam is the son of the woman who graduated from my high school with me. We have gotten together with him and Ting Ting on a number of occasions. It is great to travel around Beijing with them because they both know the city and they both speak the language. So, getting into a taxi and giving directions, is not a problem. Adam chats with the driver the whole time, while we three ride in the back and talk and take in the sights.

We had asked them to take us to lunch at an authentic Roast Duck restaurant. They did not let us down. We had the "soup to nuts" version of the lunch and we ate until we could eat no more. We paid for the meal and the total for the four of us was under $100 US dollars. The carver came to the table and carved the duck for us table side. I ordered a Sea Cucumber, which is a delicacy in Beijing. It is similar to Eel, but it has to be specially cooked in order to preserve the taste. It's a seafood that tastes similar to a cooked mushroom. I guess I'll try anything.

This brings me to the title of this post. Beijing fast food is really like the US, except in one specific area. I hope the pictures do it justice. It's a block long venue of what China refers to as fast food -- a collection of booths that sell fruit, fish, eels, squid, shrimp, silk worms, scorpions, etc. for the eating. They even have a soup that is sheep intestines (no, I did not try that). I did eat the fried squid and the fried scorpion. The squid was much the same as I have had in the states that we call Calamari.

Not much of and adventure for me, so Christina challenged me to try something that was out of the ordinary. I opted for the Scorpion. There were three of them on a stick, fried, and then handed to me. There were a lot of international people standing around watching me eat this. I did insist that Adam have one of the three. They were crunchy and tasted like the oil used to fry them. Actually, they were very tasty. When in Rome ...


We left the "fast food" and attended a performance of the Beijing Opera held in a tea house. A very interesting experience. A varied performance with some opera and other things added in.

All in all, this was a great ending to our trip here to Beijing. We are not done blogging and we hope that you will continue to check in with us. We want to share some of our Olympic "friends" with you -- people we have met over here. One of the benefits of coming to the games is that there is an instant connection with people. Everyone is here for the same reason. Soon we'll share some of those experiences with you.

Rick

Jenny Finch Kind of Day

For those of you up-to-date with the blog, you will know that today's morning was softball. There are always two games each session. The First was China vs. Japan, which is a big rivalry. We decided to split up today since I wanted to go to softball first. Christina did not arrive at the venue until the end of the second game. She had transportation problems that I will let her blog about. She was ready for a beer by 11 a.m. today.

The worst part about her arriving late was she saw a shortened game. When one team is ahead by seven runs at the end of the 5th inning, they stop the game. Mercy rule you could call it. US was up by seven at the end of the fifth on some key hitting and the marvelous pitching Jenny Finch. The US softball team has a nice tradition after the game. They come to a fenced area behind the stadium and do a "meet and greet". This is mainly for the players to catch up to the friends and family and say hi since they are sequestered in the Olympic village with little play time.

My dream came true today as Jenny Finch, the pitcher for today, stopped to have her picture taken with me. She also signed my ticket. We asked her to do this since we did the same thing in Athens, so now I have two pictures of Jenny and me.

We took a taxi to the other side of the city - when I say other side, I mean a trip. It cost us 60 yuan which is about 10 US dollars. In Philly the trip would cost a lot more. You have to show your destination to the driver in Chinese. Some of them know some English but it is usually limited to hello and thank you. If you show them where you are going in English, they get confused.

We stopped at the Today Show and had some fun times with the tech guys and met some more
Americans there. Matt Lauer was not on the show today, so no picture of Matt and Christina this year.

Tonight we went to the green for Track and Field and it was awesome. 90,000+ people -- mainly cheering for China. We saw the finals of the heptathlon. The US woman took bronze and seemed surprised at her finish. The highlight of the evening was the men's 100 meter finals. Usain Bolt cruised to a world record time. He even pulled up at the end of the race to "hot dog" it for a few strides and still got the world record.

An amazing day for our last days of games. We have plans to see either Beijing Opera or Acrobatics tomorrow and a lunch of Roast Duck -- the one meal I have missed so far. I haven't eaten anything real exotic. I have not had Scorpions, yet. I did have sauteed eel that was tasty and spicy.

Check in tomorrow - you never know what we will do.

Rick

Blue Sky Day

When we woke up this morning, there was blue sky. This was the first we have seen. It was a beautiful day. A light breeze, sun, and blue sky. Perfect for our first trip to the Birds Nest and a day in the Olympic Green.

We headed via the metro for the Green. We "had" to get back to the Olympic Store to buy more pins. The Chinese have really taken to pin trading. They see you wearing pins and they approach you and stand in front of you with the intent to trade. They have really gone for some of the pins that I brought with me that were very colorful from previous games. These are all duplicates for me, so trading them just adds to my collection. I have pins on my wall at home from all of the games I have been to, so I need to add a Beijing collection.

The "hot" pins are from the various sponsors. I have gotten some of them while here. We "scored" a Today Show pin this afternoon. We hung out at the Today Show set and talked to many Americans. We were there for the start of the filming and, we hope, that some of you saw us standing behind Matt and Meredith for the introduction. We were with a group of people all cheering U-S-A. The first interviews were with Nastia and Shawn from the Olympic All-around Gymnastics finals in the morning. You already know that USA took Gold and Silver. We met and had our pictures taken with each of them. We missed our photo with Matt Lauer and hope to catch him tomorrow when we are there.



We went to the Birds Nest for the opening of Track and Field. We saw the first gold medal ceremony of Track and Field and an American won silver in the shot put. Track and Field is like a three ring circus. There are events going on all the time and it is a little hard to focus your attention. Especially when your tickets put you in the nose bleed section. So much for E-bay. Tomorrow we are in the lower tier, right near the infield area of the Birds Nest, in row three.

That is the night of the men's 100 meter finals. We saw Tyson Gay, the favorite, in his early heat tonight. He cruised to an easy placing for the semis. We are excited about our Saturday.
We have US womens softball in the morning. Christina will probably come late to the event. I want to see China vs. Japan in the first game before the US women play. We hope they have a "meet and greet" area behind the stadium so that I can get my picture taken with Jennie Finch. I will add it to my picture with her from Athens.

We are coming close to the end of our stay at the games. I am sad that it has to end, but it has been great and just as tiring as all the others.

In case you are curious about the best Olympics in my experience, it has to be Barcelona. It was my first, in a foreign city, and it was just electrifying. Nothing beats your first Olympic games. Each one after that has been special in its own unique way. Athens was special because of the history of the Olympics dating back to 776 B.C. in Olympia. The Athens Games were part of the Pan-Athenic festival in honor of the goddess Athena. Her statue stood in the center of the Parthenon on top of the Acropolis.

We have been having a great time in Beijing. We hope that you, the readers, have enjoyed catching up with our journeys and adventures. We love to get your comments back because it tells us that people are onto the site.

We have posted pictures on a sharing site called Shutterfly. Go to: www.rsandcv.shutterfly.com to look at them.

Rick

Reader Challenge - "What is Queueing?"

Hello Readers - here is a challenge for you.....What is queueing?

If you are American - you may not even think twice and say - well, of course, you wait your turn....stand politely in a line...be kind to others...but in other parts of the world - there is no such thing as waiting in line. So - my challenge to you -where did we come up with the idea of waiting in line? Is there some history to it?

We we not thrilled as we waited in line to get onto the subway - with people pushing their way into the train; but then we met an American living in China for 7 years and he told us that about two years ago the Chinese governmnent started line monitors in the bus and subway lines, to teach them how to queue. This man told us that before two years ago that people would push you down just to get in front of you. He suggested that we be thankful that they have learned as much as they have!!

It was raining when I was leaving my great shopping trip from the Silk Market today - so I thought that I would take a taxi to the apartment, rather than taking the subway. I went out to the street to hail a cab and quickly realized that I was not aggressive enough to actaully make that happen. Others were jumping in front of me when an open taxi came by. I was standing with a very nice couple from, I think, Britain, and they were getting annoyed (and wet) as others jumped in front of us to get the next open taxi. They soon discovered that there was a taxi line in a parking lot, so we thought we would try to queue to get a taxi.

Fancy idea, but even with a line of people waiting, people still jumped into the next taxi that was open, even if they were in the back of the line. Even though it was annoying, I soon discovered that I was in line with the German badminton team manager and coach. They had lost their matches the day before and were done with competing and were shopping at the silk market. So - even though I kept losing the taxi - I had the great opportunity to meet people from all over the world.

So - what is our challenge to you.....teach us all the history of queueing...what countries do it....what countries don't......what do you think about it? Are we too nice to stand in line?

Thanks for your input!

Christina

Shopping Spree at the Silk Market (don't tell Rick!!)

Just arrived back at the apartment from many hours of shopping at the Silk Market. To my shopping girl friends - I know that you are shocked that I actaully went shopping! To those who do not know - I hate to shop! But as I blogged before - this place is amazing. I took some video and will try to figure out how to download so that you can see what I mean.

So - again today - it was Rick's idea to shop - he wanted some knock off products - and boy oh boy - are there knock off products there! I turned my back and he had bought a "Spider" ski jacket for $60. (those who ski know that is a great deal) But - I think that the jacket has the zipper on the side that is typically the side that female clothing has the zipper. Many would say - big deal - but think about it - when you zipper - men and women typically zipper on opposite sides!

But - Rick had plans to go to Team Handball with our new friend Adam - so he left me at the Silk Market. Now...was that a good idea???? I started out going to the foot massage section of the market. Our friend Mel (who should be here with us) told us that foot massages are cheap and great! So - I thought - when in China - do as the Chinese...I got a foot massage. But....as typical...there were many, many, many more services offered. "...lady, do you want to add this clay to your pedicure - it is good for you?....lady, you need to polish your nails - look, I do one for free...." )(I promise, I am not being politically incorrect - these are exact words!!) By now, I have learned to ask how much, but still have a tough time saying no! and Mel - things are MUCH more expensive now that the Olympics are here in Beijing! But - I got a fabulous 75 minute pedicure, foot and leg massage and clay footbath for 360 RMB - which is about $45....and I got to meet a representative from the Indian Olympic Committee, an atletic manager from Washington state and a student from the University of Notre Dame traveling in China.

Not bad for my first 75 minutes alone in the Silk Market....Rick would be happy with my money spending...

ah - but then - I went to the upper floors - remember that I told you that is where the higher quality shops are?....and well...I shopped!! Now - here is something interesting....when we took our flight over - we flew on United. We had a GREAT, GREAT flight crew. Robert was kind enought to charge my phone in the first class section that he was working in; Denise was GREAT with giving us data about things here in Beijing. They gave us some shops to visit in the different markets. When I told a few locals about this - they did not respond favorably. They indicated that there were kick backs for the whole process.

But - my take - it is much easier to shop when you do not have to negotiate every single dollar. So - up at Katherine's on the top floor of the silk market - they told me that I got the "special" price - what that means, who knows for sure....but, in my mind I got a good deal. (hmmm, maybe when Rick sees the credit card bill, he may not agree!!)

I went back to the lower floors and stopped to get a few tops on my way out...since I am not a shopper, I really have no idea what a good price is - but, I got three "fake" polo shirts and an Olympic pin for 150 RMB - about $23....I am thinking that I could have gotten them for less, but I was ready to get out of there and really had a tough time with how much work it is to bargin.

Rick is due back from the team handball event - he wanted to see the men play. Tomorrow - Friday - we have tickets for track and field - so we get into the Bird's Nest.....will report about that experience!

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