Closing of Nick's Olympic Games 2008

China has been a great place and will be very memorable for me. This is a country unlike any other. These folks are capitalist communists. They are working hard to make a buck just like my fellow Americans. Well soon to be my fellow peers. The hard working taxi drivers are great. They have had to put up with all of us. The only Mandarin words I have really picked up are Hello (Knee How), Left (Zoah), Right (You), and Straight (Ye Zi Wa Chin). I am sure those are spelled incorrectly but I can at least pronounce them. The entire time I only had one thing written down in Chinese characters, which was the Apartment address. I called it the magical piece of paper, it had what appeared to be chicken scratch on it but you showed it to the taxi driver and you magically got home. Beyond that we got everywhere by showing pictures of things. People get really creative at communicating when you are unable to speak. I had a blast with the Mandarin sayings installed on my iphone. I would say a random saying from my phone and I always new I got it correct when they would look at me like did you really just say that. I am sure my accent on Mandarin is terrible matter of fact I know it is. I always got super funny reactions from these guys. There are plenty of ridiculous saying in the phone so I would pick one that was most fitting for the time. For instance I would often use the saying " I would like a beer". Then the driver would go off in his native tongue that I obviously could not understand a word of.

There are many people there that speak a bit of English so it was always fun to find out just how much they knew. This came about because early on in the trip we tried talking to a gate guard. He had said some thing in English very clearly so it appeared he knew enough English to help us out. Then when it came down to it he had practiced English sayings just for the Olympic games. When we asked something that he did not know the answer to he would just repeat a saying he had memorized. He was an English phrase speaking, armed, security, Chinese robot. I wonder how much I could get one for in the USA? Ever since this incident we all see how much English the probably robots know. It appeared that they did not know much after our extensive investigation into this matter. What we all discovered is since their English is minimal and they are relatively timid, we could get away with anything we wanted. If we were persistent and talked really really fast, you get what ever you are after. They are stubborn and standoffish at first but once they can not understand you it is completely different. I love countries where I can do pretty much what ever the hell I want. I think I have said this before, the U.S. is way to restrictive on my lawless life style. My skemming criminal mind could never flourish on the mainland.


Here we have China's number one ice cream bar. It is coffee ice cream covered with chocolate which is delicious. I am trying to figure out my the word Magnum just sounds dirty. As if it did not sound sexual they go ahead and put an attractive woman on the packaging. I can not figure out what Magnum and women have to do with ice cream but I do know that all the guys bought one and some got two.



I thought Starbucks was a rip off back home in china they really try to get you. I did not buy a drink since they are around 7 USD a cup here.


We were at the silk market in downtown Beijing and I ran into my good friend Jennie Finch.


Here is another one of Jennie encase you wanted a different pic. I think she may play an Olympic sport. If you know what it is let me know.


I could not resist trying on a Panda Bear hat at the silk street market. If you look to the left that is one of the many workers who think foreigners are crazy. I can tell she has judgmental eyes on me. I must give notice to the fact that these works are the most fluent English speakers in all of China. They have to bargain with foreigners all the time so they are very good and trying to make you buy things. They use such tactics as physically pulling on you to stay in a store until you buy some thing or trying to make you feel bad about not buying. It is a great time to go there and bargain. If you have the memorabilia pins you can get about 75% off anything. Shannon even traded two pins for a coach wallet.


Now here is ray, and just a couple seconds ago that table was about a meter off the ground. Yes, Ray broke the beer pong table. Latin cultures have things like salsa dancing which they share from generation to generation. Americans have beer pong. The beer pong table was quickly fixed with four chairs used as legs for the table. You know this bar was owned by an American because they were serving Rouge Brewery Beer. I have a feeling that it may be the only place in China to actually sell Rogue beer. Rogue is to nice of a brew to use for the pong so we had to stick with Tsingtao the locals delight.

Ray and Pat getting serious. It was about this time when a guy who thought we could not hear him said they must be Americans no one else plays that game.

Matt and Mike pulling the game some how with two back to back balls into the cups. The restaurant we are at here called the Ricshaw had the best Mexican food in Asia which is not even half as good as what is at home. I can not what to get a Sarita's Quesadilla when I get home. mmmm. My mouth is watering just thinking about it.

Tickets?

Tickets are very hard to get for events if you do not buy them in advance. Since they sold out over a year ago you are only going to get them from scalpers. The Chinese of course are trying to profit off the situation. So we wanted to get into the Birds Nest or the Water Cube and never could find tickets under 600 USD so we decided to make one last effort and get ticket for around 200-250 USD. I mean really when am I ever going back to Beijing and going to tour the Olympic stadiums. Ray and I started walking over to the ATM from the Canada house (thanks again Matt) and a guy apprached us. He was like hey do you want to buy some handball tickets for an event that is going on right now. He was will to sell them for below face value which almost never happens. When you are somewhere like China meeting so many different people you really start to pick up on accents. So, I could tell this guy was an American. We started talking more and I told him the type of tickets we were looking for and he said hang on a minute let me make a couple of calls. Low and behold they had two Birds Nest Tickets for that night at 150 USD a pop. Ray and I were just like "YES" we'll take them. We some how stumbled into getting tickets for the event. This is no easy task we really did not think we would ever get them. The dude also throw in the handball tickets for free.


We were very excited to get even next to the Birds Nest. You have to have a ticket to get within a mile of the thing. We both immediatly started taking pictures and as a result of this I think I have a couple hundred photos documents the next hours.

Thats a big bird's nest.


Chinese Troops.


More Nest


Hand Ball Gymnasium.

I really did not even know what handball was when I went into the gymnasium. I can safely say that it is lame and I will never go back. I am still trying to figure out how this is an Olympic sport.

Nose bleed seats but still they were not bad.


A crazy Norwegian. She gave me her flag. Then later on some guy came up to and started saying something in Norwegian and I looked at him with a blank stare. He then quickly walk away. As quickly as he walked away I gave the flag away. I do not want people thinking that I am Norwegian.


First site of the Aqua Cube a picture is nessasary.


Sun set at the Nest.


Yes, I fit in. just not here.

Close up rather uninteresting photo of the nest


My ticket to get in.\


The Birds Nest just as the sun was setting.


Let the track and field events begin.


The Stadium was packed.


We finally made it to our seats. They were a little high but over all athey were good. We got to see all of the events that were going on. They all go on simultaneously.


Wow, this place is big. I have been to a couple big places like Charlottee Motor Speedway, United Center in Chicago but I have never seen anything like this. This place is real big, I have nothing to compare it to. You should just go check it out but make sure to take a picture with you because you will not be able to tell the taxi driver where you want to go.


that is my happy face.


I watched the world record Javelin throw by Andreas Thorkildsen.



Despite popular opinion this is just the Olympic torch.



It is not easy making this many women this tired.


USA won the both the Men and Women's 400 Relay


A great shot if I must say so.

Ray and I were both ecstatic.


We cut infront of about 40 people waiting for a taxi by jumping in immediatly after someone stepped out of it. After the event was over everyone was trying to get out of there. We were sitting in traffic for a long time so I decided I would be a bit of a smart ass with the taxi driver and make some conversation. I got out my trusty unlocked iphone and told the driver I could use a beer. He then went off in Mandarin and before I knew it he pulled over in front of a 711.

Ray and I went and got 3 beers. One for each of us and one for the cabbie.


In an earlier blog I talked about trying to get into the Budweiser house. Before we did not have any luck because it was athletes plus one friend. We all decided we would go back just to see if we can get in even though Budweiser sucks and you should drink anything else. :)

Ray and Pat ready to roll out.


So we made it into the Budweiser house. Just like I was taught from an early age it is better to ask for forgiveness then permission. Once the front gate guard told us there was no way we were getting in we just went down a ways and all jumped the fence. This was a great idea until a minute later a guard on the other side of the fence started yelling at us. Now he was an American and told us we would spend 10 days in a Chinese prison if we did not leave immediately. That got us a little worried, then we told him that we would leave, he said ok then walk in the opposite direction. That is when we obviously knew he never say us jump over the fence and he can kiss my ass. We walked right in.

Free beer? Yes, please.

At least they sponsored my headache.


Good Bye Beijing.


Until the Next Olympics.

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Nick