Showing posts with label Olympics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Olympics. Show all posts

Monday, August 25, 2008

An Adventure of Olympic Proportions

Friday morning was my last day of summer camp, so Marilyn joined me for an English party with my students. We got really into a competitive game of Disney Monopoly. Marilyn and one of my students destroyed us. After the party, we headed back to our place to meet up with our friend Amy who flew in to hit up the Olympics too.

After meeting up with her friend, we ventured onto the subway, which was chock full of other Olympic spectator hopefuls...
_MG_4406

It took a while to get through security, but once we did, we were rewarded with this glorious sight:
_MG_4422
As far as I can tell, this is some kind of Mongolian Dance Crew, a little girl, a couple foreigners, and a devilish HuanHuan (the torch Fuwa)

In the distance, the great Olympus...if Olympus were the name of some gigantic bird's nest.
_MG_4432

Our first objective (after documenting the Mongolian Dance Crew): Eat!
The only two choices in the Olympic Village? Mcdonalds or some weird self-steaming lunchbox...we decided to brave the mob and go for the arches.
_MG_4443

A fatigued and weary traveler glances back disdainfully, the golden arch cheerily illuminating the disgruntled horde.
_MG_4447

After eating, we made our way to the Bird's Nest. Only to find a strange mythical creature posing for photo opps.
IMG_4461

Further along, we encountered a not-so mythical creature: ten-time Emmy award winner Al Roker. Marilyn and I hung around for a bit trying to insert ourselves into the background of various Today Show shots.
_MG_4479

As we climb the steps to Nest Olympus, a sweet shot of the Water Cube:
_MG_4511

The highlight of the event: Men's 4 x 100m relays. Look closely and you can see Usain Bolt smashing the competition and the world record. History is being made here, and we're watching it from about 200 rows back! Yessss...
_MG_4578

A couple rows up from us? A group of Jamaicans.
_MG_4581


Our Jingjing flag looks a lot like the Jamaican one. I wave it in solidarity.
_MG_4592

Bolt and friends come by for a celebratory dance. We and the Jamaicans watch from 200 rows back.
_MG_4620

Torch and Moon
_MG_4700

Torch and Beans
_MG_4703

So that's it, our Olympic adventure! Keep an eye on the flickr stream for more pics.

Saturday, August 23, 2008

Olympic Teaser

We're back from our night of Olympic craziness. We had a blast. Of course, we'll post more later, but thought I'd put a teaser out there:

See if you can spot us in this video. Marilyn and I were alternating waving a green Jing Jing (the panda Fuwa) flag behind the camera during this interview. Eventually she sat on my shoulders, but most of the time she was on my shoulders the camera was on the volleyball player...

(if you, like us, are not in the US, then you'll have to use Hotspot Shield or something to watch it)