Goodbye to Zach :(

The 14th was Zach's last day in Beijing. We had bought beach volleyball tickets for that day and they were these sweet, all-day bonanza tickets, from 0900-2250. The lead women's American team of Misty May Treanor and Kerri Walsh were set to play at 9, so we wanted to get there first thing in the morning. If you are not familiar with this pair, since teaming up in 2001, May-Treanor and Walsh have dominated both the AVP and FIVB beach volleyball tours. Going into the 2008 Olympics they were riding a win streak of 101 matches and 18 tournaments dating to June 2007. Needless to say, we were excited to see them.

They play was great, but the Americans dominated play (in the black bikinis), as you can see below...ultimately they won 21-12 and 21-15.




Between matches, the VB venue features the beach babies. As you've seen previously, cheer leading is new in China, but they do have a couple things down pat--less clothing and more hair equals happy viewers. On a side note, I'm pretty tan and often people stare at me because of how dark my arms and face are. The Chinese love whiteness, even to the point that they put bleach or a whitening agent in almost all of their face care products. However, it is my extreme hope that these Olympics will really start a trend towards a 'healthy tan' here in China. Moreover, it would be nice if the Olympics encouraged women here in China to spout some muscles and break a sweat doing something. I guess the longer I live here, the more I realize how apple-pie I really am. But, I digress...


Zach and Cliff mindlessly and wordlessly snapped pics of the girls with all the other male drones in the stadium.


The 10:00 game was the #2 ranked Chinese pair, Xue and Zhang. As it currently stands, there are two Chinese womens teams in the semi finals, and one of the games will pit them against each other. This team looked pretty good...they ended up winning 21-13 and 21-9.




At about 1pm, the sky darkened and it started to pour rain. To our surprise, instead of stopping play, they just kept on trucking through the brackets and handed out rain gear to all of the fans. The rain was coming down in sheets and the players were still throwing down some serious ball.



The next day Zach flew out...we had a great time with him and its always nice to share the city with someone new. The evening of the 15th we had tickets to the Birds Nest--we were excited! One of the biggest reasons for our excitement is that we hadn't been on the Olympic green yet. Only ticket holders for events on the green are allowed in--no ticket, no siteseeing. We went alittle early and walked around to some of the venues and the sponsor stands. When 8pm rolled around, we started to make our way towards the stadium. On our way, we came across the Today Show set. We got to see them produce a couple pieces, including one with Bela Karoly and Mary Lou Retton.


The person with their back towards us is Meredith Viero.


After shaking hands will Al Roker, we made our way toward the Birds Nest. Pretty impressive, huh? The bright light above the nest is the torch and the one on the left hand side is the moon.


They say that there isn't a bad seat in the house...I would tend to agree, but as we were in the third tier, I think we could have gotten better seats.


You've all heard me lament the inadequacies of the concessions...here is another great example of WTF. Cliff orders two hot dogs. What do we get? Two hot dogs in a paper bag. No buns, ketchup, mustard, relish, napkin or stick or anything. Ur kidding, right? We didn't eat these.

Here is a close up of the start of the mens 100m prelims.


The next morning we headed out to ping pong. I've never seen professional ping pong before, so we were lucky to get in on the womens semis...China HK vs Japan and Korea vs USA. If you look closely, you'll notice that even the Americans (far court in the red) are Chinese expats.

Watching the Chinese play was pretty incredible...the hand eye coordination it takes to score against these ladies is impressive.



Compare that with the play of the Americans and Koreans, you can see how dominate the Chinese truly are in this sport.