I Believe In the Power of "You and I"

I should be working on lesson plans – but it’s way more fun to tell about our adventures!

Yesterday after the craziness of class and trying to make chicken nachos in our tiny kitchen (potential cooking video to follow, pending Becca’s editing skills), we decided to head out on a little sightseeing mission.

The goal: Olympic park at night!

We had to take the subway – out first time navigating the underground of Beijing on our own. Fortunately, it’s pretty well laid out. The girls trusted me with the directions and I’m happy to report that we made it safe and sound. It was rush hour, though, so it was pretty packed – we were smushed up with some strangers..

When we got to Olympic Park (“Olympic Green”), there was a huge crowd gathered.. doing karaoke! There were tons of people just watching this guy sing along, and people singing along. Very different than home, where karaoke is confined to dark, questionable establishments! Sadly, they were all in Chinese or I would have forced Alicia and Becca to accompany me in some Shania.

Our first area to explore was the Bird’s Nest. In the 2008 Olympics the track and field, among other things, were held here. It’s quite an impressive structure – as it should be, it cost 33 million dollars! It’s beautiful when it’s lit at night.

Across from the Bird’s Nest is the Water Cube – also extremely cool. It’s like a glowing box or, as Alicia called it in her video home, an “ice cube”. The Water Cube was home to all the water events, including my looooove Alexandre Despatie’s diving. Now, it’s a water park on the inside – I’d love to get in there and ride some slides before we head home.

We had a pretty awesome little photoshoot outside the Water Cube – mostly with self timer and propping the cameras up on the ground against our purses. Where there a million people around to help us? Yes. Did they offer? No.. so we carried on! There was one instance of me setting the timer and RUNNING to my spot that was pretty priceless and, sadly, not on camera. I put my flip-flopped foot up on the cube we were standing on and TOTALLY wiped out. Flat on my butt in the middle of Olympic Park. I got a few laughs, that’s for sure.. This is the point where Mom would say, “Flip flops are not appropriate footwear!”.

We made our way up toward the torch – they have all the names of the medalists on a wall leading up to the rings. Very neat! We saw lots of Canadas (though not as many as we will be winning in Russia, holllllaaaa at the Winter Olympics)! I also tracked down some Phelps love for Laur – I couldn’t help wishing my Olympics bestie was with me for the experience.

I climbed up on the rings that had a sign next to them in Chinese – which probably said, “do not climb”. WHATEVA!

Then we ate at the Olympic McDonalds and headed home. We had planned on going to bed early, but it was 11:30 before we shut ‘er down.

 

So many adventures, so little time!