Olympics Opening Ceremony

Elina (Russian classmate) and I watched the opening ceremony performances on a big screen TV on the sports field of Beijing University of Science and Technology. There were sites at various parks in the city that were set up for public viewing. We sat on the grassy field in a sea of black-haired heads. Campus is not too far from the Olympic Village, so you could even see a tiny bit of the fireworks from the field.

In the artistic performances, I was impressed by the juxtaposition between traditional Chinese culture and modern day technology.

We grabbed coconut pies and cheeseburgers to go from McDonalds because it was the only open restaurant in the area (24 hours, man) as today was an official public holiday. It was full of people gathered to watch the ceremony on the wall-mounted flat-screen TV. Armed with dinner and MccyD’s Olympic paper fans, we headed back to the dormitory to watch the parade of athletes on smaller screens in our rooms.

I won’t go into the details here now, but I want to say that I support the 2008 Beijing Olympics. And I agree with G.W. Bush's stance (how many times will these words ever be typed from my fingers?) on China and the Olympics: boycotting the Beijing Olympics would be an "affront to the Chinese people". Of course we could debate about this. But in short, one of my greatest lasting impressions throughout my travels, has been the difference between nations and their peoples as we know them through our foreign policies (and cultural stereotypes) and the actual people from those countries in their true human form with hopes and dreams and fears like ours. Okay, I'll stop there for now...

I have a tickets for Olympics baseball and wrestling later in the month. I’m looking forward to seeing things from inside the stadium!

p.s. I don't eat much McDonalds back home in the US, but McD's has the greatest chicken sandwiches in China--made with real chicken meat, sometimes even dark meat--yum!