Week 4 In Beijing!

The trip is halfway over! I can't believe it. The Olympics start Friday and my 18 days of continuous work start then too.

Luck must be on my side! The press operations department at my venue was given 5 tickets to the Opening Ceremony dress rehearsal. Our managers set up a lottery to fairly distribute the tickets and my number was the second one called! Since the Opening Ceremony is supposed to be top secret until Friday, I couldn't bring my camera. It was still absolutely amazing to see though. Definitely watch it Friday, August 8th at 8p.m. I believe. The beginning was my favorite part (but I'll let you see for yourself).

(Me and Adrienne working hard???)

Work's been going well. Our venue officially opened to the media yesterday. I've gotten to chat with some people from NBC, AP, Reuters and a few other smaller agencies. A few American guys doing technical work for Beijing Olympic Broadcasting showed me where their secret coffee room is since my favorite beverage is hard to come by in China.

It's incredible how small of a world it actually is. I was recently at a meeting that was conducted in Chinese so I got my own personal translator. Before the meeting started, she and I talked about school and where we were from. I told her I currently live and go to school in Boston. She looked totally shocked that I said Boston but I couldn't understand why. She then told me her parents moved to America a few years ago and live in downtown Boston...only a few blocks from my apartment. She had just gotten back a week ago from visiting them.

(The court all set up for the Olympics!)

The other day I was walking with my friend Alex to meet some people for dinner. Walking toward us were two girls that were clearly American. One girl had a University of Massachusetts shirt on. Of course we felt obligated to say hello. It turns out they both go to UMass-Amherst and are studying for a month in Beijing. One of the girls knew Alex's cousin who played on the school's football team.

Yet another small-world experience occurred last week at work. A Chinese student told me that she had an aunt and uncle in America. She said her uncle is a surgeon and they moved there seven years ago. I asked her if she knew what city or state they lived in. She said "They live in Harr-ford??" Her English isn't great but I could definitely tell she was trying to say Hartford. I replied, "Hartford, Connecticut?" She answered with much enthusiasm, "Yes! That's the place!" I started laughing and told her that my hometown is only two hours north of Hartford. She couldn't believe I even knew where it was.

Other than that, not too much has been going on. I worked seven consecutive days and now am enjoying Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday off. I'll probably be spending most of this down-time doing classwork. I'll have much more to talk about next week...I get to watch USA vs. Japan the first night of the Olympics! Should be a great match. :-)