Beijing Olympics Come To A Close

Well, the Olympics are (finally) over and Beijing is beginning to wind down. The massive presence of foreigners shrinking as the mass exodus continues. Between hosting guests and attending events, we’ve been really busy so we apologize for not posting anything new for a while.

This is the first time we’ve lived in an Olympic city so we weren’t sure what it would be like. It was definitely a crazy time but we really enjoyed it. It is a life experience and we feel extremely fortunate that we were afforded this incredible opportunity. Here are a couple pictures to recap our time...

Here's Phoenix carrying the torch across the Great Wall...

OK, so maybe this was in the Lenovo sponsored building.

But here’s Cliff in the Bird’s Nest walking at the Opening Ceremony…

OK, not really. He’s actually in front of a wall with a life-sized picture from the Opening Ceremony. This was at the USA House, a place where the US athletes, coaches, and families could go to relax, eat, drink, and watch events on TV. We fortunately knew the sister of an Olympic field hockey player so we gained access. Here’s a picture of the live entertainment from the rooftop.

Here we are at the National Stadium aka the Bird's Nest...

And at the Water Cube...

And from the Fencing Hall of National Convention Center...

And from the Wukesong Sports Center Baseball Field when the US beat Japan in extra innings during the prelims (they played again in the Finals with the US winning the Bronze)...

And from Worker's Stadium where we watched the US Women's Soccer team win the Gold...

And from the Capital Gymnasium, Brazil vs Poland (Brazil eventually lost to the US in the Gold Medal Match)...

And Table Tennis from the Peking University Gymnasium (that's our school!)...

Though we went to several different events (see our previous post for the fully updated list), we enjoyed Beach Volleyball the most. The event organizers made sure they kept everything in line with it’s southern California roots – up beat music, bikini clad dancing girls, and excited announcers made it fun for all.

After a lot of ticket bartering, we were able to attend 3 days of Beach Volleyball: the final day of preliminary games, the Women’s Semi Finals, and the Men’s Semi Finals. What’s more is we got to see USA Gold Teams Misty May-Treanor / Kerry Walsh and Phil Dalhausser / Todd Rogers in action. They really did deserve the Gold… they utterly dominated the field.

Here are some more pictures outside the stadium at Chaoyang Park.

This fountain actually shot water (a la Las Vegas’ Bellagio, albeit considerably smaller) in tune with the Beijing Huan Ying Ni (Beijing Welcomes You) song.

If you somehow made it through the entire Olympics and are still unfamiliar with this catchy jingle, here’s the you tube clip.

Finally, here’s a picture of the two courts they had set up outside the stadium.

The event staff organized 5-on-5 games to 3 points. Winning team would stay on the court and the losers would get back in line. Games went quickly and we witnessed one team win several games in a row and were rewarded with Olympic towels. They were by no mean expert volleyball players but for the Chinese, just getting it over the net was normally enough. Zach was still with us so we decided to give it a try. By chance, we ran into two other friends so they joined us as well. After a couple hard losses, we finally gelled as a team and won 10+ matches. But after all of that, for some reason, we didn’t get towels.

Fortunately, we didn’t leave completely empty-handed. Cliff purchased a Mikasa beach volleyball and a Sharpie with the goal of getting signatures from the Gold Medal winners. By squeezing past less experienced Chinese signature seekers, he was able to get all four!