BOCOG tour

BOCOG stands for Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games... they are who we are volunteering for.

Over the last 3 days we took a parade of tour buses with several schools from the US, Australia, and UK (including U of Iowa!) around Beijing. The first day we toured the water purification plant, where they told us it was acceptable to drink the water (??) and I was interviewed by CCTV. They were mainly yes/no questions and I've never been good under the camera's scrutiny so I'm afraid it wasn't the best interview, but oh well. We then went to this suburban area that they told us the government had built to show us what the future China would look like... I have some suspicions on this part, but probably shouldn't write in this blog. Here we also watched a famous calligraphy teacher paint some characters. I've included a photo of the gorgeous work he did in front of our eyes.

Saturday we went to the Great Wall! This was one of the things I looked forward to most... We went to the Badaling portion, which is the most touristy part, and unfortunately the most crowded. As we were entering the gates the crowds were halted from going in or out for about 30 minutes. There was a lot of confusion until a long brigade of cop cars, black limos, and motorbikes filed through... apparently the President of Mexico was visiting that day as well! Finally, we were let through the gates, but it was a smelly, sweaty herd of hundreds of us and it seemed that one in three of the Chinese had open umbrellas that got caught in my hair or poked me in the eyeball. Quite frustrating. Anyway, we finally made it onto the Great Wall and managed to climb to the top. The crowd aside, it was one of the most magnificient sights I've ever seen. The history seemed to come alive. We were also blessed with one of the rare smog free, blue sky days, which allowed us to see the mountains and the Wall in the distance.

Sunday we visited Summer palace, which served as a summer getaway for the corrupt Empress Dowager Cixi. It has several lavish buildings and the world's longest corridor surrounding a lake. I tried to imagine what it would be like with only the sound of the birds and a handful of people. That night we visited the Ming Tomb, which has a famous walkway with stone carved elephants and other animals. I was a little disappointed that we only saw the tomb and not the walkway...

Our tour guide told us the ancient 5 most important things in life. They have a saying in Chinese about this, but they are- Eating, drinking, peeing, pooping, and sleeping. HAHAHA! I guess it's true, though!

Monday was a rainy free day, which we used once again to scour the flee markets. It's hard to turn down souvenirs when they are so CHEAP!

AND- today we started training. All of the ONS (Olympic New Service) volunteers met in a hotel auditorium for 6 hours of Flash Quote training. We'll be in the mixed zone (where the athletes walk by the reporters on their way to the locker rooms) with the journalists. Our job is to listen and write the quotes word for word and submit them to the INFO2008 computer program that is used to aid all international news agencies big and small (like the Associated Press down to the DM Register.) I am officially doing Field Hockey, a sport I have never even watched, so I have a lot of studying up to do! The training was done by Australian, which made me a little homesick for Sydney! The Aussie students were also sitting behind us.

Tonight a group of us are going to Hard Rock Cafe Beijing for a little American food relief. I'm proud to say I've almost polished my chopstick skills though!