My First Chinese Adventure

Beach Volleyball was awesome today. Besides the fact that CCI makes us meet up two hours before the event starts, Devon and I had a great great time. I didn't know it at the time, but the events are really close to our apartment, so getting to them doesn't take two hours. Regardless, waking up at 4:45AM wasn't fun. When we got there, the gates hadn't even opened and we were stuck outside in the humid morning air. When we did get in, it was empty. I slept for a few hours before the games started and woke up just in time to see that the Chaoyang Beach Volleyball stadium had started to fill. We were pretty close to the court as well. The US men's team started the day off with a victory over Argentina, and that was only the beginning. We saw team Georgia beat Russia in the country's first Olympic Beach Volleyball Match ever. Georgia has never had an Olympic team for beach volleyball. After that game things really got good when China played against Norway. The China team won and the crowd was going wild. "Zhong guo jia you!" was all you could hear (Go China!). It was awesome. The next game we saw was Brazil and Australia. This was an intense game and Australia barely got a victory. Everyone moved on from these games as they were prelims. By the time the Australia/Brazil game finished the heat and humidity were making me irritable. We decided to leave early and enjoy the rest of the day. We headed back to the apartment where I took a nap and woke up just in time to get a few things done.

Beach Volleyball--August 13, 2008

I was sitting at my laptop and just hanging out when Jimmy came home from his daily activities. First thing in the door, he asks me what I was doing. Well, I was thoroughly enjoying doing nothing online (the afternoons are killer because it is the middle of the night in the US). But, I wanted to entertain the thought of doing something so I asked whats up. Jimmy had gone looking for scalped tickets earlier in the day and got football tickets. I was kinda tired but after the World Cup in Germany (2006) I knew how much fun it could be. I said I would like to go but I had no idea what I was getting myself into. Right away Jimmy tells me that the tickets are for a game in a nearby city Tianjin and we have to catch a bullet train there immediately. Well, you only live life once and the train isn't going to wait. We got a cab and headed over to the Beijing South Station.

Here, it was a mess. Tons of people everywhere. The Chinese don't queue

in lines and neither Jimmy nor I had any idea where to go or what to do. Luckily, there are tons of Chinese volunteers around the city that speak decent English. We asked one of them what to do and the girl was phenomenal. She told us that all of the trains are sold out until 6:00, and the game started at 5:00 PM. I figured it would be like this but she said don't worry I'll get you a ticket. She went up to the counter, squeezed to the front, spoke some Chinese, and there we go. Two standing tickets on the next train that leaves in 15 minutes. We'll get there are 5:00 PM which was in 30 minutes and by the time we get to the stadium we shouldn't have missed much. The fun part was getting on the train. They don't form lines, making it every man for himself to mob the train for a good spot. Jim and I got a place by the door and we sat down for the train ride. The bullet train is awesome. It's a wonder that they don't have it in America. 240 MPH Beijing to Tianjin in 30 minutes. While on the train we were talking...well trying to talk with the guy next to us. Turns out he is the Director of International Trade in China (or something like that). From what we could talk about, it sounds like he imports oil and "chemicals" from other countries. He said mostly from Africa and the Middle East but also from Canada, USA, and South America. I was awed while talking with him. What are the chances of meeting someone who does something along the lines of what I want my career to be. He gave us his card and invited us to visit him at his Beijing office. We got to Tianjin and thought we would kinda plan ahead and get return tickets before the insane crowds got out from the game. While waiting in line there was an Australian, Brian, who also was buying a return ticket to Beijing. We got to talking and found out we were both going to the soccer match. And we also found out that there were two games that night. Italy vs Camaroon and Ivory Coast vs Australia. We decided to adopt Australia as our home team for the night. On the cab ride over however, our little adventure received a fun little twist. We asked Brian the Aussie where he was seated. 1 seat away from us in fact. Small world or coincidence we all thought that was pretty hilarious. When Jim described the guy he purchased the tickets from they weren't even sure it was the same person. After getting to the stadium, we still had to walk around to get to our entrance gate. On the walk over we met fellow Australians and one of them claimed to be the father of #16 on the Australia National Team. I haven't had time to check who it is but we wished him the best of luck.

Alright, to wrap this one up, we had a great time watching the games. The Italy and Camaroon game ended up as a stalemate and the Ivory Coast beat Australia 1-0. We had a few beers, of course met tons of new people, including the little girl next to us, and wrapped ourselves in American flags that we had purchased earlier. We got back home around 12am and crashed. It was a great day.

What an adventure.

Tianjin Soccer Games