Exciting Day!

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We had a very exciting day at the Olympics. Yesterday (Saturday) we suddenly found ourselves with both gymnastics and swimming tickets - at reasonable prices too. After rushing back from church this morning, Chris and I found ourselves on the subway heading to the Olympic park. We met a Chinese guy on the subway also going to gymnastics and made a new friend- who offered Chris tickets to the wrestling finals. We got in the Olympic park after a not-too-long wait at security. It was very overcast and rained a good part of the day, but still was so fun to be out there.

We got to the gymnastics qualifying event about twenty minutes before it started and found out we were going to see the USA women compete! It was perfect. Our seats were kind of high up but in the middle and we had a pretty good view. It was so fun to see the American women, who are in second now after China after this first qualifying round. THE Americans had a couple of mistakes in the beginning, but ended almost perfect on the beam, their last event. Here we are at gymnastics.

Outside the National Indoor Stadium, home to the gymnastics competition.

Inside the Stadium overlooking the floor. The vault was right in front of us as well as the floor exercises mat, with balance beam to our right and uneven bars to the left.

This is Shawn Johnson on the balance beam. All four USA girls did excellent on the beam- which to (very inexperienced me) seems like the hardest or scariest of the four events.

After gymnastics ended, we had three hours to hang around the park until the swimming competition at 6:30. We saw the Bird's Nest, visited the Coca-Cola exhibit (basically a 30 minute commercial, but they gave you free Coke and did have an exhibit of past Olympic torches that was pretty cool). We ate at - guess- McDonald's for an early dinner. There wasn't much else to eat except snacks or "convenient noodles". It poured down rain, thundered and lightening-ed so we waited there almost an hour before getting to "the Cube".

The Bird's Nest, with the flame in the background if you can see it ( while the air hasn't been great lately, today really was rainy and foggy with limited visibility).

The Cube is very impressive- I really liked it. The bubbles are really made of this soft plastic, it is well-designed and a very cool venue. We went to this event with two other couple friends here- Mark and Meg(our neighbors) and Chris and Sarah (parents of David from playgroup).
We got to see Michael Phelps swim the 200 meter freestyle and saw the USA men's 100 meter freestyle relay team break a world record! Also very exciting. The atmosphere is very fun inside- lots of foreigners but also lots of Chinese shouting "Jia You" (literally "add oil", a common cheer to encourage athletes) whenever a Chinese made an appearance.

Outside the Cube before we entered.

Here we are with our friends the Shaffars and the Morries'. It was a very fun triple date.

Michael Phelps in lane four during the men's 200 meter freestyle. He was holding back tonight I think- it was only a qualifying heat, so no records broken by him tonight.

The Cube at night- so pretty (a little hard to get a great picture because it was pouring when we came out). We have a few video clips too, but I will post those another time. I need to go to bed).

We ended the night back at McDonald's, since our friends' hadn't had dinner. This McDonald's has several items on the menu that most McDonald's here do not have- like salads and I tried the blueberry yogurt parfait.

It is so convenient to get to the Olympics from where we live- just 1 km walk to the subway, which goes directly there. Austin apparently had a fine night with his babysitters and the Shaffar kids next door and we enjoyed a long, fun date.

In other exciting news, my friend Amy Terry gave birth to a nine pound girl, Caroline Grace! Jia You Amy! Well, it is off to bed for tired me.