What I've been doing...

(Un)Fortunately, I haven't been able to update my blog because odd days are for Super Olympic Fun Time (working Women's Handball) and even days are for cramming in as much Beijing/Olympics stuff as possible. Here's some of the things I've been up to:

• 8/8/08 8:08 PM - On a subway for the start of the Opening Ceremonies, oh well. Got into the National Indoor Stadium and mingled with athletes before they marched to the stadium. I met just about everybody in the NBA playing in the Olympics outside of Kobe, Lebron, and Yao; D-Wade, Melo, Dwight Howard, the coaches, Andrei Kirilenko, Chris Kamen, and Dirk.
• 8/12 - went to the Men's Volleyball Matches USA v Italy and Brazil v Serbia. I also used my pass to get into the press conference afterwards, which was very emotional as it was the first game after the Drum Tower incident. Shook hands with several Americans after the game and had an exchange with Dante Amaral, who is possibly the best player in the world
• 8/18 - I went to the Men's Vault Final and Women's Trampolining Final. The first event features really fast athletic guys flinging themselves full force off a spring towards an obstacle which they quickly hit with their hands to spin in crazy directions. The second event girls do so many twists and turns that I went cross-eyed. A Pole (a guy from Poland) won Gold in the vault while the Chinese added to their Gold count via trampoline.
• 8/20 - Tried to scalp a ticket to Croatia v Espana for basketball, while police walked between us to buy soda and food from a stand next to the "Scalping Tickets is Forbidden" sign. No ticket was less than 3000 RMB ($400ish), so instead went to USA-Japan baseball for 100 RMB ($14). 0-0 after 10 innings with four total hits, I think partially because the loser would go on to play Cuba in the semi-final while the winner would play against North Korea. I passed the time by heckling the local Japanese left fielder Atsunori Inaba with a variety of Japanese phrases (to the delight of the Japanese contingent seated around us). USA won in the 11th 4-2 after they put players on first and second to start the inning, thats a weird rule. Bring on Cuba.

I'm heading out for today, tomorrow is the Women's Handball Gold Medal Match.