Odds and Ends

I always have people asking where we are sitting during games. Here at Fengtai Stadium, the USA parents seem to gravitate to the seats above the first base side. Those are not always our ticketed seats, and that does not necessarily mean that Gary and I are there. The rest of the crew usually is, but Gary and Vince (my brother) have taken to sitting in the outfield bleachers for part of the game, and I try to move around some looking for good spots for pics. When I am not taking pics, I am usually with the other parents though. So if you are looking for us, look where you see a US flag over on the upper first base side, or maybe on the third base side. Yesterday all the USA parents seats were in the midst of the Canadian crew on the third base side - so we migrate elsewhere.

At the games you will often see large groups of children or people all wearing one color or one type of shirt. The children are kids from different schools, coming to the games as sort of a field trip it seems. Anything to get out of a day of classes! The one group of people that seem to catch everyone's eye, though, is the group of fans in bright yellow shirts. I am not quite sure who they are, but they are at many of the games cheering for China or against anyone else.

Dinner at the restaurant the other night was incredible. See pics of the food from that dinner in the Forbidden City/Tianamen Square slideshow. We all left stuffed to the gills and had to walk around for another 20-30 minutes to work some of it off.

I referred to Claire as the "rock star" in the slide show from FC/TS. As we walked around she was asked 4-5 times by parents of young children (about her age 10-13) to take their picture with her. She was a bit taken aback the first time someone asked, but Liz encouraged her to do it, and soon she knew how to handle the situation like a pro! Our interpreter, FanJing, explained that the Chinese appreciate beautiful girls and it is an honor to take your picture with their child.

There are between 15-17 million people here in Beijing. There are so many apartment buildings here it makes New York look like a small town. During the Olympics, people with cars can only drive on an odd or even days depending on your license plate number. And many people are not driving anyway right now, expecting lots of traffic. Traffic has been no worse than traffic at home, but there are also thousands of people walking and biking every day, rain or shine. I can only imagine what traffic would be like if everyone here were as attached to their cars as many of us in the US are. I think I said in one of the other posts, cities in the US would have to have freeways 20 lanes wide!

OK - that covers some little questions that have come up lately. On to the next blog!

L