8/8/08

8/9/08 8:56 Local Time, Media Village

I cannot believe I didn't actually write on 8/8/08 itself! Yesterday was one of the luckiest days in history to the Chinese people and they sure went all out for it. We had to be out of work before 12 noon yesterday because they were locking every entrance into and out of the Olympic Green. So if we stayed at all past noon, we would have been locked in our compound until today, which didn't sound too appealing to anyone, really. When we got out, a few other aquatics interns and I walked to the Olympic Superstore that just opened. The place literally had every single Olympic item you could ever possibly imagine. Needless to say, I got all of my gift shopping done and then some.

Yesterday was the worst weather we've had here by far in terms of heat, humidity, and smog. When I woke up, I couldn't see past more than 2 blocks out my window. I really would have thought they would have made it rain for the Opening Ceremonies, but apparently not. And you really couldn't be outside for more than 5 minutes comfortably, it was so hot and sticky. It was miserable to be walking around outside, so I chose to skip out on sightseeing for the afternoon and hang out in my air-conditioned apartment. There will be more chances to see things after the Games, and hopefully the weather will be a little bit more favorable for us. I'm still dying to see the Great Wall and the Temple of Heaven.

Opening Ceremonies absolutely blew my mind. We didn't get to watch it them person (which I was kind of relieved about due to all of the hype over security and threats and everything), so a bunch of the interns watched it on a local network in one girl's Media Village room and ate pizza. It was actually a lot of fun. And every time we saw fireworks on our TV screen, we would run to the windows and we could see and hear them outside. It was almost painful how close we were to it without being able to actually see all of it. They were incredible, as expected, though. The rumor was that every person performing only performed once and there were 2008 people on the field for every act. It was crazy how precise they were. We kept talking about how no other country could have ever pulled that off like that.

Today is our first day of actual broadcasts! It's only prelims of a few events tonight, so I don't know when exactly it will be shown on TV at home, but I'm still excited to be a part of it nonetheless!