Six-thousand hits!

Six-thousand hits?
Who would’ve thought that when we started this blog just three weeks ago that we’d get over 6,000 hits?
By all accounts, it’s been a popular thing on both ends. We enjoyed sharing our experiences. We watched the counter number grow and hoped that folks enjoyed reading our posts and personal blogs.
I’ve been trying to [...]

Pin trading, revisited

It didn’t take long till Larry and Shawna had the act down.
Shawna Xu, a Chinese student at Renmin University who’s been acting as our guide/translator during our stay in Beijing would act like she was trying to get Larry Powell to trade some of his pins – Olympic pins and Missouri Centennial pins.
They’d flail [...]

Trinity Nelson: The torch relay

Chros McDougall: Gymnast-mania

Access was opened up considerably for volunteers today.
Thus, Beatlemania. Or in the case of China, Gymnast-mania.
I’ve written a lot about the Chinese infatuation with their athletes. The 12 particular gymnasts representing China in the Olympics won seven medals this year, five of them gold, including both team titles. It’s fair to say that the gymnasts [...]

Alex Monnig: Cheering China

The Chinese are putting their home-court/field/country advantage to good use.
The constant raucous support of Chinese athletes during these Olympics is different from the support we often see at home in the United States. I’ve written before that the US has traveled well at these Games, providing audible support for athletes in several venues. But the [...]

Askren’s day at the Olympics

I was attending a Chinese acrobat show Tuesday night when I got a text message from Doug Meigs.
“I have two tickets for tomorrow’s wrestling at face value, 100 RMB. You interested?”
I was very interested.

The story Larry Powell doesn’t want you to read

Larry explained his situation to the Chinese volunteer.
The volunteer smiled. Was it one of those, “Yeah, whatever pal” smiles or was it an “Everything’s going to be
all right” smile?
Turns out, it was just a smile.
“Please, wait one moment,” the volunteer said, then spoke Chinese into his headset.
So, we waited.
But that’s getting ahead of the story.
Monday [...]

Lyndsey Nielsen: A day in the life…

The bus turns the corner and I can see that it is going to be a long day.
On a bus with barely 20 seats and a maximum capacity that cannot be more than 75, there are probably close to 90 people riding this morning. Since I don’t have a choice, I squeeze myself onto [...]

Furqaan Sadiq: Not just a hockey match

Amid the political mess from the War on Terror, Pakistanis find solace in two things: cricket and field hockey. Given that cricket is not part of the Olympic repertoire of athletic events, hockey steps in once every four years and Pakistan reawakens its love affair with the sport.
Pakistan’s heads of state – even the [...]

360-degrees on the Olympic Green

If you’d like to see the shot as a 360-degree presentation, click here. Have a look at Laura Dotson’s other panoramic shots by clicking here.