Learning Chinese

I apologize for the kind of negative post, but thanks to everyone who left encouraging comments and emails. My favorite may have been my brothers about all the places I could be that would be worse. Lets just say it was very entertaining to read! The second day of training went a lot better. First, I was smart enough to get up early and go with another girl to get breakfast at mcdonalds- I know I know, McDonalds- but it was the only place open before 8am. Anyways the breakfast put me in a great mood, I love breakfast and it's crucial that I have it in the morning. We got dropped off at the wrong entrance, but it ended up better because we were way early (imagine that!) and we got to walk through the whole green. Right up next to the birds nest and water cube! AMAZING. Don't worry I have pictures I'll update shortly. At training it was better, I got to watch the chinese team practice the trampoline. I also started learning chinese. Ok, not much but it's a start. My group of 15 kids taught me:
I love you
I'm sorry
I'm hungry
I'm thirsty
sprite
It was awesome because every time I said a word right I got a round of applause. A girl in my group also changed her hairstyle to look like mine and a guy told me I was beautiful. Then he proceeded to ask me if that was too forward and the girls in my group asked how I know when boys in America like me. It was very interesting to try to explain that! It was fun to say the least. For my 2 hour nap time I took a book and got 1/2 way through it and took a pb and j for lunch. It ended up a lot better than the first day and I really like my boss and my group.

That night, Allie heard that tickets were going to go onsale at the main box office- we thought it would be a great idea to camp out for tickets in China. So after a trip to wal-mart to buy snacks, yoga mats, and beer (you know the essentials) we went down to the main ticket office.

WOW, lets just say we thought we'd be a few thousand back. We were a few 10 thousand back at least. There were so many people and we quickly realized we wouldn't get tickets. So what better to do than sit down on a curb and people watch. There were 6 of us and we were on a random curb when our friend Eric got the idea to make a sign that said "line starts here" we quickly got a crowd and got it translated to chinese on the back. Long story short we had about 100 people around us for an hour, we got every media person there around us it seemed, we got interviewed by the Guardian, and got the cops called because in China they don't like large groups.
LInks:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/gallery/2008/jul/24/olympics2008.china.beijing?picture=335958099
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2008/jul/24/olympicgames2008.china1
and the Hong Kong paper:
http://www.mingpaonews.com/20080725/spb1.htm
translated: The captions says: A group of American volunteer came to buy ticket, but after seeing the scene they opt out (or maybe something like chickened out?) They also made a "the line starts here" sign to entertain themselves.

It says in the article: A few American volunteers hoped to get baseball tickets, they brought yoga mats, beer and food hoping to be first in line, but when they arrive at 6pm, they realized they were too late.

Eric was quoted: This is too scary! We came too late! Even if we start lining up now, we still won't get ticket, so we're just having a picnic here and have a look at the scene of lines."

Anyways, it was a very eventful night. Yesterday Eric Allie and I went to get wrestling tickets so we could see Ben Askren (former Missouri wrestler). Allie left to go to work and Eric and I sat there for 2 hours and got 4 tickets. (Don't worry dad, they were 15 dollars each) ALlie also somehow pull off getting us swimming tickets for august 17th! SO I am very very excited.

I have to get running because we're going to the bamboo park now, but I wanted to thank everyone and let them know that things have gotten better and will continue to do so.

Safe travels for my little brother who comes back from Africa in the next few days!!!! I will try to update again later today or tomorrow!