Roach Sighting!!

(The exclamation points are not in a good way)

Day 8,

8 PM

Today I hate china.   I saw what I thought was a cute little beetle scurrying across our floor  - but it was a ROACH.  gross.   Ever since my dad told a story when I was a kid about two crawling up his pants at an airport I have been mortally afraid of them.  

On the bright side though:  Veronica is in china!!  Hopefully I can find her though because Becca already cant find her, and it has not even been  24 hours yet since she landed in Beijing.  She brought a valuable cargo of items that I forgot in the US and can't find here, mainly: rainbow sandals.   I have been wearing the white canvas shoes that I bought for three pesos in Salt for the past month, and now they are not white anymore, but a disgusting shade of grey streaked with patches of darker filth.  I realized a few nights ago when I sat down for a moment in Guijie that I must look like a bum. 

We are planning on going to Rickshaw tonight to watch the US bball finals against Oz.   Hopefully there will be a big aussie crowd.. they are always down to make some noise and have a few beers. 

Midnight

We got confused about the time and missed the game, but I heard it wasn't that great, we won by a lot.   Instead I watched transporter 2.  Which was awesome, and they left it completely open for a third one.  I recommend it to anyone, as long as you like crazy action movies that have negligible plot and a lot of unrealistic moves.  

 

Handball is Cool

Day 3,

Last night I finally got to go see the olympic venues! They are at the complete opposite side of the city from our apt so we had to ride the subway for 45 minutes to get near the area. We had no idea where the gymnasium was, but this turned out to not be a problem, there was a herd mentality coming off the subway so we just followed the crowd. It was dusk so light was reflecting off of the Birds Nest, and the lights in the water cube had just come on. They were both much more beautiful than I had expected them to be (if a building can be beautiful).

Our tickets were only 11 dollars, so I was expecting handball to be a bust, but in fact it is an awesome sport! The match was Norway v. France (still prelims) but the crowd was pretty much all Norwegian, all pretty rabid fans, with face pain, cowbells, and viking hats. There was also a tremendous amount of flag waving. I felt a little bad for the four french fans gallantly cheering for their team. I got to try out my new fancy camera, and took some great action shots, but I still haven't mastered it so although they are clear they color is a bit off and they are a little grainy.. I'll have to play around on photoshop with them.

After we went to HouHai:

A really pretty lake rimmed with bars. Not the best place to go out though because all of the bars are the same: a chinese person singing inside and then seats outdoor, its more of a dinner / lounge spot. we only go because there is a little tiny bar we like where they give us free drinks, and there is a really cute chinese kid I play with.

Then we went to Club Bud (budwiser) which they apparently have at every olympics and is free and all you can drink. The crowd was mostly foreign, and I had a great convo with three dutch guys all wearing soulja boy shades about Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates. Love the conversations I get myself into. Left at 3 to go home but ran into the rest of my apt on the way out, and walked to Sanlitun to get breakfast instead at Rickshaw, which is open 24 hours and has awesome american food. I proceeded to consume a disgusting amount of mozzarella sticks, eggs, pancakes, bacon. It reminded me of the epic breakfast Arun and I had in Vegas at 7 in the morning. I still feel sick today - but that could be a hangover, right now I am very thankful for Tyler Bradley-Hewit's prescription ibuprofen, that I somehow ended up with after graduation, thanks teebs.