Correction

I have to make a correction...

Yesterday we had another ONS training session during the morning. Afterward, we were all supposed to meet with our managers to get our accreditation cards (badges that allow us into the venues.) Stephanie (also in field hockey) and I went to the person we thought was our manager, only to find out she wasn't. I will spare the details, but as it turns out, most of us who studied abroad last semester were not given jobs with the Olympic News Service, but instead with Press Operations. This means we will be doing things like crowd control or passing things out... Needless to say we were REALLY upset. We were all unable to take the exam that the Mizzou kids took in March, but were told we'd just be pushed through. We still thought we'd all be doing journalism. Several of us went yesterday to talk to the professors about this, and they are contacting our managers to see what can be done. I know Mizzou wants this to be a substantial experience for us, so hopefully they can figure something out.

SO- since my situation is evolving and still somewhat unclear, I won't begin work until next week. Today was a nice free day, just laid out by the hotel with some of the girls and talked about what else we should see in China. BOCOG set up so much for us that we've pretty much knocked out all the important tourism attractions in Beijing!

I'll keep you updated on what happens with my job...

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!

The past few days have been a whirlwind of tourism.
Friday we toured two major media venues in Beijing. The vice president at both places gave us a presentation on media in
China and how their businesses worked. I was surprised to find that many of them are pushing for more freedom for journalists. Our lecturer on the Media industry in China mentioned that US reporters got their facts mixed up on the issue in Tibet, and he said this could have been prevented had they been allowed the freedom to go on location and report. Interesting...

Saturday the university had set up a tour of some major attractions in Beijing, starting with Tiananmen Square. It was drizzling, but I decided that was better than 96 degrees... We saw the parliament building, Mao Zedong's tomb (where they kept his body for TEN MONTHS after he died for the public to pay respects), and a national museum. Tiananmen Square is located on the midline of Beijing, along with the Forbidden City, which we moved onto next. This was where all the emperors lived until 1911 when the Republic of China started.

I could bore you with all the historical facts about these places, but I'm sure you'd rather hear about the little cultural spectacles I noticed along the way. First, the toddlers don't wear diapers... they have the middle of their pants cut out and they just squat right where they are. The picture above isn't as cute now that you know what he is doing... haha! Also, I had heard that the bathrooms in China consisted of holes that you squat over, but I didn't think it was still that way- I was wrong. For the women, there is a urinal type thing on the floor that you go into and then flush. No toilet paper, no seat. It is true. I took a picture, but spared my blog audience! While we were at the Forbidden City suddenly a rush of Chinese guys came over to our professor and all wanted pictures with him. He's a tall, bald, middle aged, black man, whom they all believed was Michael Jordan!!! AHAHAHA All the Mizzou kids played along and the Asians loved it.

After these two attractions, we moved on to the Hutong Villiage where the Hutong families live. This is a huge extended family that has a rich heritage in Beijing. They were offered a large sum of money to sell their valuable, center city piece of land, but chose to retain their historical location. We were able to tour the traditional Chinese village and the shops near by in rickshas (carts pulled by men on bicycles).

After this we went to Prince Gong's Mansion, a garden and mansion preserved as a park for tourists. Here we attended a traditional Chinese tea. She prepared four types of tea for us and demonstrated the proper way for men and women to drink it. She had these neat cups that changed design when hot tea was added... I had to buy a couple for souvenirs. I'm not usually a tea drinker, but this stuff could work miracles!

Sunday was a free day, so Sam and I took a cab to a market in the city. This was the mecca of all markets! Five floors of knock off purses, bags, designer clothes, etc. Plus authentic souvenirs, wall decorations, and jewelry for cheap. By the time I got to the floor with all the silk items I was getting pretty good at bargaining... I was able to get several silk scarves for a ridiculous price! It kinda became a game to see how low we could go... good fun!

Today we had lecture on Chinese/Beijing History for 3 hours in the morning and then had the afternoon off. Sam, Regan, and I decided to check out the famous Beijing Zoo with the pandas. They're really trying to fix up the zoo and panda area for the Olympics, which was noticable, but the rest left a bad impression. There were all the standards- giraffs, lions, tigers, monkeys, etc, but their habitats were not up to Western standards. The animals' homes were not very similar to their environments, especially the lions/cheetahs/tigers. These poor fellas were in small cages. I really left the exhibit feeling pretty bad for them.

Have I mentioned how CHEAP everything is here? The zoo was 20 Yuan (about 3 US dollars) lunch is around 10 (so about $1.50) and so on! A great change from Sydney!

Tonight we have a formal dinner hosted by the university and may possibly meet the students volunteering from North Carolina. I know I'm repeating myself, but the Chinese people at the university have gone over and above to make us feel welcome! More later...

Chinatown!

I suppose I should change the title of my blog to something like Details about the Chopstick Chicas or the Beijing Babes...

After some of the hardest goodbyes of all time, Sam and I were dropped off at the Sydney airport about 2 hours and 20 minutes before our flight- plenty of time. But the line at check-in was outrageous. By the time we got to the counter we'd been waiting 1 1/2 hours! Then I found out that I was over the number of bags I was allowed and Sam didn't have her return flight itinerary. So I had to pay and she had to convince the ticket people to let her use my itinerary that had her name on it. By this time it was 30 minutes until take-off. We sprinted to security, physically perspiring by this point, where we had to cut in line several times. As our bags were going through they took one of Sam's aside and proceeded to check through it. I decided since we only had 15 minutes to board that I would go to the gate and tell them we were coming. As I'm finishing through the security line, all the sudden a security guard informs me that I will be the random search. As I'm being frisked, I see Sam sprinting past. After catching her attention and getting my privacy back, we ran to the gate- only to find out we didn't have to rush at all. There was a wind advisory and the plane was delayed for an hour! We were both panting for breath at this point after our 400m dash to the gate. Anyway, after 2 movies and 4 episodes of Two and a half Men on the plane, we landed in Beijing. But the drama continues... I get to customs and they don't believe it's me on the passport! hahaha! As if anything else could go wrong! They called over someone else and were finally convinced it was me. We found two people from Renmin University who picked us up and took us to our hotel.

Yes, I said hotel. The place we are staying for the next 7 weeks or so is actually a nice hotel! Quite a change from the Australia living conditions!

Today we were up early and were busy all day. We took a group photo and one for our ID cards right away, then tried our uniforms. We get to keep the polos, pants, and shoes. It's all Adidas and even the shoes have 'Beijing 2008' embroidered on them! OH YEAH! I will be covering Field Hockey during the Olympics, but am trying to get tickets to other events. So far it's been hopeless. Sam and I have been trying for months, but the marathon and triathlon are free so hopefully we can make it to those. Then we went to lunch at the cafeteria where we'll be eating for the duration- which only offers chopsticks. So I guess it's learn or starve.

This afternoon we had our first Chinese Culture lecture on the Chinese Media. Apparently, Renmin University and Mizzou have had a relationship for 94 years! It was interesting to hear their opinion on CNN and American media in general- they actually seem to be pushing for more media freedom in China.

Tonight we had a banquet to get to know other Chinese students and other Mizzou students. We were all presented with marble stamps with our Chinese names on them, which I found pretty touching. Everyone has been so nice and helpful, and are trying to do everything possible to make us feel at home. The Chinese seem to be such happy (and hilarious) characters!

Tomorrow we'll visit a couple of the major media venues in Beijing...

Cheers to Sydney

This will probably be my last blog until I get to China...

After Raychel left last week, it has just been Sam R and I left here. She went up to the Gold Coast and Surfer's Paradise for a few days and then I flew up to Byron Bay to meet her last Saturday. We checked into the hostel that night and just chilled out by the campfire in the back yard with some other backpackers. Unfortunately didn't get much sleep that night due to the jack hammer-like sound coming from our English roommate! It was actually so loud I had to laugh! Sam and I woke up the next morning and went for a morning beach walk, then she went on a whale watching tour while I laid on the beach and roamed the little surfing town. That night we sat by the fire again and got into conversation with some Germans and a Canadian. They were working at the hostel so they could get free accommodation- I was beginning to wonder how all these backpackers managed to pay for 3 months of travel!

The next morning (Monday) we went for another long beach walk and hopped into a tour bus to check out a few surrounding small towns and the countryside. One of the stops was at this guy Paul's house. He grows everything himself on 80 hectares of land and has not left his house for 10 years! His appearance is pretty funny, my face in the picture is after seeing the spider that seemed to live in his hair... but nonetheless his hippie home was pretty cool.

Tuesday Sam and I went for a last beach walk all the way up this cliff to a lookout spot where we actually saw whales and dolphins in the distance. You could see the whales because they were blowing air out of their blow holes and one did the big breach out of the water! Byron Bay is the most Eastern tip of Australia and all the whales have to swim by there each year in order to mate. They go all the way from Antarctica to Indonesia to do this- about 10,000 pods of them! After getting some lunch we checked out of the hostel and went to the airport.

Wednesday and Thursday I went to my final working days at DesignStreet. I was pretty touched when they bought cake and made a going away card for me. Graham made a pretty good speach thanking me for my time there. I will actually miss that place a lot. Thursday night Sam and I went to a Symphony at the Opera House. It was a bit heavy for my taste, not a lot of upbeat pieces for a concert that was supposed to be themed around love and life. We guessed he must have gotten his heart broken or something... The picture is of the inside of the Opera House (you are not allowed to take pictures in there, so hopefully I don't get in trouble!). The organ has over 10,000 pipes that can make every sound the human hear can hear, pretty amazing!

Yesterday Jonty and I went for one last surf in Manly. The waves were just my size so was a good way to end my surfing. I'll be returning my board on Monday or Tuesday. :( Last night I went over to Jonty's for a traditional South African brie. They moved here from S. Africa about 7 years ago, if I hadn't mentioned that. It was basically a barbeque, but the fire burned for about an hour before the mean was put on, which gave it a really nice smokey flavor. I brought over my American brownie mix to bake, but they already had dessert made. They are missing out, I said! Probably make them on Monday...

Today I'm just doing a few last minute things around here and heading up to a friend's beach house to celebrate his birthday. Sam and Jonty are going up with me, and we'll probably check out a bit of the Central coast tomorrow during the day.

Only 4 days left... if I don't write again, watch for my blog when I reach CHINA!!!

Cheers!

The first goodbye

Well... it's been pretty quiet around here so far this week. My roomie Sam left us early Sunday morning. I refuse to accept it though. I keep telling myself her door is closed because she is taking a loooong nap. On Saturday night before her departure, the four girls plus Alec and Kevin went on a one hour long Harbor Cruise and then to dinner. Was kinda funny because we were the only non-Asians on the boat... The night was crappy, rainy and windy, but we didn't care. On the boat we recapped all the most embarrassing, funny, awkward, exciting etc. moments of the trip.

Last week I finished my final paper and exam! Now I am just working at DesignStreet and getting ready for China. Sam R left for the Gold Coast today, and I'll meet her on Saturday night in Byron Bay for 4 days... I'm sure I'll have more to report on after that. I plan on taking my surf board for one last hurrah, but the waves have been massive lately. Since I won't have any one to surf with, I may or may not go out, depending on the wave size.

I can't believe it's almost over!

A little work, a little Sex, a little birthday cake

After applying for the working visa, my tax file number, and a bank account, I've started working as a paid employee at DesignStreet! Next week I will happily welcome my first income in 4 months! Much needed! They've had me helping Brooke with her jobs since she's so busy, so I really feel like I'm helpful now.

Last week was also my final week of classes. I'm sad to say my grades haven't been to the par I'm used to, but fortunately they only transfer as pass/fail. I completed my intern 3000 word paper and gave my presentation on Friday. It went really well, I didn't realize how much I had learned and how proud I was to be working on all those projects! I took in the Sony Vaio computers catalogue we finished recently to show... I'm so proud to say I had a part in that! I had so much to say about DesignStreet during my presentation that I actually went over my time limit. They didn't stop me, so hopefully that meant that it was interesting. I had to improvise a little because I made my powerpoint on a Mac and they only had PCs, so none of my images, including the client logo list, showed up. I still think it was one of the best presentations I've given though.

Friday the girls and I went to Sex and the City!!! We had talked it up for so long and I am happy to say it was EVERYTHING it was cracked up to be! All the loose ends were tied (I won't give details in case some of you haven't seen it) and the world is at peace. It was just one of those nights when you are so thankful for your girlfriends... all you girls from Sigtown and Mizzou- you are the BEST!

Today is my roomie's (Sam A) 21st birthday so last night we went to a club in Sydney called 'Tank.' This place was NUTS! Really a lot of fun. We all dressed up, and I was finally able to wear my blue dress I bought at fashion week! We felt like a million bucks. Sam and I were like machines on the dance floor, we danced 20 billion songs in a row, just one of those nights that we had SO much energy! So funny- she woke up this morning and was like 'Kristine my legs are actually sore!' hahahaha! For her actual birthday this morning, we went to Pancakes on the Rocks for some appetizers and chocolate pancakes... We all literally rolled out of the restaurant.

Now I have to study for two final exams... one is on friday and the other on... drumroll... gasp.... Saturday! Can you believe it?! An exam on a Saturday! I know, I was floored! But at least I'll be done with school. Then off to Byron Bay for 4 days. Jonty and I went surfing yesterday and I was pounded by the waves. It was really windy and choppy and the waves were big. I almost caught a couple and then bailed at the last minute out of absolute fear. I've just started thinking too much and when you hesitate for one minute in surfing you get blasted. I need to go back to the basics on some smaller ones again to get my confidence back. I'll take the board to Byron, maybe a couple more times before I leave with Jonty, and then I have to sell it back. They told me I get half back, some welcomed cash for China!

I'm starting to realize that I'm leaving soon... I'm not too sad about the girls, because they'll all be back at Mizzou. But there are a few other people who will be VERY missed.

The pics are of the girls out on the town for Sam's Bday, and the inside of DesignStreet. The desk on the far right behind Tracy is mine!