Quick note on the opening ceremony

Hi guys! Just a quick note before I head back to work at the National Indoor Stadium. I spend most of my evening wandering around the spectators' stand and met a lot of athletes.

Here is a video of Yao Ming (flag bearer for China) getting ready to walk over to the Bird's Nest. I apologize for the lack of audio, my camera did not pick up the sound. But everyone was cheering for the Chinese team, chanting 中國, 加油! Literally, it means "China, add fuel", a Chinese way of saying "strive for the best".

Food at the Venue

We get free meals at the venue during our training. Breakfast is provided if you arrive before 8:30am and I haven't had a chance to try that out yet. Lunch is from 11am-2pm and if we have evening shifts, we can eat dinner at the venue as well.

We started training a few days before the Chinese volunteers joined us. Back then, we had a buffet style lunch. There were about 10 family style dishes to choose from and I think most of them tasted really good.

I still remember how many of my classmates got a dish they thought was "cucumber and beef stir-fry" and it turned out to be "cucumber and pig's liver stir-fry" It did look a bit like beef, so I don't blame them. But they were really shocked when they put a piece of liver in their mouths. Now, I get quite a few inquiries about the dishes that we get, making sure they don't put weird stuff in their mouths.


As the Chinese volunteers came, we switched over to microwavable lunch boxes (like TV dinners).
Since there are so many volunteers at the National Indoor Stadium, each department get assigned a different time to go to lunch.

There are seven dishes in each set, usually half meat and have vegetables. Then, we also get a bottle of water, rice, soup and a fruit.
I think the dishes are alright, and out of the seven, I can usually pick two to three that I find okay.
Actually, the lunch in the picture was my least favorite since we start having these kind of lunches.
One of the slogans for this Olympics is "Green Olympics" and I'm really impressed by the recycling system at the venue. After every meal, we have to dispose our trash into three different bins. The smaller bins with yellow bags are for "food waste" and so we dump our left overs inside. Then the taller ones with black bags are for "other waste" which are things like the plastic lunch boxes and spoons. On the far left, there are blue bins (which are barely in the picture) for "recyclable waste" such as our water bottles.

Fighting for Olympic tickets!

Hi everyone! I'm Lynette and this is my first blogpost on our KOMU blog. I'm an international student from Singapore and I also lived in Hong Kong, before coming to the states for college. So, I've had the advantage of being able to communicate in Chinese with the locals. And knowing Chinese is really helpful when it comes to ordering food and buying Olympic tickets!

Round 1:
As Ted has mentioned on the previous post, four of us left our hotel at 6am to line up for tickets. Danielle (another Mizzou student) and I went to the Workers' Stadium to get football tickets. We wanted to get tickets for Men's Football (soccer) preliminaries with Nigeria vs Argentina and Serbia vs USA.

As we arrived, we found out that probably about 1,000 people camped out here last night and were lining up in the plaza outside the stadium. We joined a line of about 200 people outside the plaza and thought our chances were pretty good.

We anxiously waited for the ticket office to open at 9am. However, the line did not move until about 9:30 or 10 and each time we only moved 10 steps forward.

As waiting in line was boring, people began to chat with each other. The people around us were very interested in Danielle and I. They asked a lot of questions about the United States, including things like the education system, culture and food. They were also very interested in our experiences in China, asking if we had visited the Great Wall and Forbidden City etc. They also mentioned Chinese officials should visit western countries more often, so that China can improve her systems and have better development in the future.

Another interesting part was all the rumors that spread around. Usually when people leave the ticket office, the crowds would run up to them and asked what tickets they bought and how many were left. Then, it turned into all sorts of rumors such as all women's tickets were gone, all men's were gone and all cheap tickets were gone. Different "sources" gave different answers and there weren't any ways to verify the information. But finally, the official word came down that all men's tickets were sold out.

Finally, around noon, they've cleared all the people waiting inside the plaza. The fences you see in the middle of the picture lead right into the ticket office. But here came the problem: without a line to follow, people just pushed and ran through the plaza, and dashed into the fences.

When it was our turn to run, the guards suddenly decided that it was too chaotic and attempted to restore order. They formed a chain surrounding us and we were trapped in the worst condition. People behind us were trying to push forward, while guards went into the crowds trying to form small groups of people. I felt like being in a sauna while I was trapped in the crowd. Everyone was sweating so bad and it was extremely stuffy.

So finally, after an hour or so, the guards managed to organize us into lines and let people into the fences. Then it took us another 15 minutes before they let us into the ticket office.
On the left: the crowd that we were trapped in
On the right: people lining up inside the fences in groups of tens


We finally got our tickets!! We got tickets for women's preliminaries on Aug 12, with Nigeria vs Brazil and Canada vs Sweden. Since we waited in line for so long, we decided to treat ourselves with the best tickets, which in fact wasn't too expensive. They cost 150 yuan each, which is about $20.

Round 2:
According to the schedule, the ticket sales would be spread out into four days. My next target, volleyball on Aug 13 or 15, would be on sale on July 27. But as I woke up this morning and read the newspaper, the officials thought the crowd was too big already and started to sell all remaining tickets early. (They finished selling tickets for events inside the Olympic Green at 3am) Therefore, I hurried to the volleyball venue - Capital Indoor Stadium.
The line seemed to be very long! It circled around the plaza and streched into a tunnel outside the stadium.


It took us quite some time to find the end of the line. But, probably with the experience from yesterday, the line moved quite quickly and smoothly. It was also spacious throughout the line.
It was quite sunny, so some local students folded hats with their newspaper.
These few local students were very interested in America and Hong Kong as well. We chatted during our wait and we got seats right next to each other.
I got tickets for both women's and men's volleyball. I would be able to see the home team, China, competing in men's volleyball. The wait today was about 3 hours and each ticket costs 80 yuan, about $11.