Day 3 - City Centre Olympics

And now the weather - the last few days have been stormy with heavy rain, thunder and lightning. So, the computers were out of bounds. That means that I'm about three days behind, so today's job is accounting for two of those days.

The opening ceremony - I hope you all watched it - was incredible! Unfortunately, I was watching it on a screen, a big one, in a park. The air was sweltering and I was cursing the number of countries there are in the world, purely because we had to wait longer for Team GB to come out. The evening got off to a bit of a bad start though - the park we were supposed to watch the ceremony in was shut due to security reasons and we ended up sitting on a stationary bus for over two hours. That meant we missed dinner - so the number of sore bums, rumbly tummies and hot faces equalled a group of slightly irritable people. Nevertheless, the ceremony was fantastic and definitely worth a watch.

The following day, we finally moved out of the school and into the city centre. We went to the gates of the forbidden city and watched the road cycling race. I was stunned by the number of competitors as they rode past, and the speed with which they race. Of course that lasted a maximum time of 30 seconds, so I passed the time by talking to a Chinese boy called Dragon. I don't actually remember his name but I remember it meant dragon. He was from an area of Beijing, watching the Olympics with his family. Like every Chinese person (except the ones trying to sell you umbrellas), he was friendly, constantly welcoming me to Beijing and telling me how pleased he was to have me in his country.

Of course, we had to move on soon after the cycling, having photos snapped of us along the way. The Chinese seem fascinated by Western culture and photograph us like celebrities. We went to a large street, with lots of restaurants and shops, and a few students and I went to the basement of a department store for lunch. With our slightly awkwardly ordered meal came a saucepan of hot stock, raw prawns, cabbage, mushrooms, an egg and noodles. You have to put all the bits of food into the stock and cook it yourself. I think it was more fun making it than eating it and I took a bite of a very suspicious bread roll that tasted similar to aniseed and salt.

The rest of the day saw a lot of walking, a little shopping and a long tube ride home. Overall, my first taste of Beijing was a good one, plus I got a good tan. Tomorrow we will be going to the Forbidden City and the Temple of Heaven, taking a break from the Olympics to taste the Chinese cultural history.

Happy blogging.