Olympic fever

It has taken me awhile to catch up, but I am definitely starting to get more Olympic fever. You can feel an excitement in the air. Today there were so many people out and about our neighborhood- it felt sort of like it does right before a holiday. The city is full of flowers and flags and thousands of volunteers- mostly young people wearing blue and white shirts and stationed on almost every corner of the city.

The weather today started out cloudy and so humid, but was somewhat clear and sunny by the afternoon. I am reading news and watching TV more than normal- trying to catch up on who's who in the Olympic world right now. There are quite a few big competitions between the US and China- it should be exciting. We are really looking forward to our August 22 tickets to track and field finals in the Bird's Nest (the nickname of the big National Stadium)...we will be sure to take some pictures. We are still trying to decide how to spend Friday night- the opening ceremony. We have been invited to some friends' house and are trying to decide if it will work with Austin's bedtime schedule. Hopefully even from where we live we will be able to see some of the fireworks. I hear they have spent millions of dollars just on the fireworks. We finally got our cable up and running for the TV, so we can now watch the Olympics - we had never set it up before this. I am sure it will be on every channel starting Friday, though no English. Unfortunately our Slingbox is still not working, so we won't have that option.

I just read on the official Xinhua news site that Beijing' s "weather engineering office" will use everything in their power to make the weather good for at least the three hours Friday night from 8:08 pm to 11 pm. In case you didn't know, the Olympics will start on 8-8-2008 at 8:08 pm- see a theme here? According to this weather article, the Beijing Olympic committee wanted to start the games on August 15, as August 8 traditionally starts the wettest period for Beijing. But the IOC wanted August 8. But in China 8 is a "lucky number", sounding similar to the pronunciation for the word meaning "get rich". So I think most Chinese are happy about it starting the 8th, if they can control the weather enough (41% chance of showers Friday night). If you want to read about it, try this link.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-07/28/content_8787101.htm

Well, I am off to bed now.