hallllooooo!
i'm not leaving for london until the 28th, so until then i'm just chillaxing at my crib (as they say). well, actually, my mom had enough of my lounging around and made me get a temp job at her company. so now i work the night shift assembling light fixtures. my mom designs them, i assemble them. (yes, it's just as glamorous as it sounds.) it's definitely not as easy as it seems, especially since i seem to have the dexterity of a 65 year-old man. after three weeks on the job, i have an annoying amount of scrapes and bruises on my hands. if i never see an electrical ballast again, i'll be a happy girl.
backtracking a little now... recap of my last week in china:
beijing: so the women's marathon that i had tickets for was the morning after our qipao parade, at 7:30AM (= death). i mean, we didn't even get back to xinsong until like 2am, and i didn't get back to my aunt's apartment until around 5. we all went to sleep, no one bothered to set an alarm, and the next thing i know, i'm awake and it's 10 am. obviously by the time we got to the 鸟巢 they wouldn't let us in, cause the event ended 2 hours earlier (even the slowest runners crossed the finish line already, haha). my aunt was pretty pissed, but i didn't really care (i was probably too tired to care). so for the rest of the day we roamed around the olympic green and went into every random exhibition hall. (the coca-cola one was pretty cool - they gave you a free bottle of coke! loove freebies.) then we went to the olympic superstore, which was ginoooooormous. i bought some gifts, and each of my wild-for-Olympic aunts spent over 500/600 yuan (!)
every night the today show filmed live from the olympic green, so we stayed around for that. it was the weekend, so it was the b-list hosts (not matt lauer/al roker/meredith viera/etc). BUT: it was the day that Michael Phelps won his 8th gold, so he was there!!! (with his mom and his sisters.) while they were being interviewed, we were in the crazy crowd in the background that always tries to poke their heads into the camera shot. but i got a lot of good pictures! (which, i will finally upload on facebook one of these days). AND: Venus and Serena Williams were there! i think it was cause they won the double's tennis gold that day. i was standing right behind them as they were interviewed, and afterwards, they turned around and waved at me. haha, i'm such a loser. but whatevs, the whole thing made my day :D
shanghai: okay, but i didn't like it as much as beijing. most likely cause there was construction everywhere, whereas beijing was all spruced up and ready for the olympics. still very pretty. obviously, went to the oriental pearl tower (the space needly thingy). and also zhouzhuang, which is a 水乡， one of those really picturesque and traditional-looking (but now very touristy and commercialized) villages on water. most random thing about shanghai, however: mcdonalds and kfc deliver -- like, wtf? that's just weird. it was perfect, though, cause the night before we left for the US was the closing ceremony, so i got to watch all of the oympics in china.
sidnenote: did you know some chinese people actually suffer from something called "olympic syndrome" now? it's like they had too much of the olympics frenzy, and are now in withdrawal.
speaking of which, the whole liu xiang thing was sooo sad. i watched it while i was in beijing, and it was heartbreaking. i don't know if there was a lot of coverage of it in the states, but afterwards his coach had a press conference where he broke down and could not stop crying... why, liu xiang, why???
keep in touch! i miss seeing all of your lovely faces already, and i'm not even "across the pond" yet. shoot me an email when you get the chance (jeanne.tong@gmail.com), or better yet, Skype me! (search for my above email adress.) i'll try to post again right before i leave for/after i arrive in london.
lots of love,
jeanne
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