Can I just tell you how much I love the Olympics? Before I got into college I was never a huge
fan of sports. I liked running and I
liked swimming but other than that I never really got into sports. However, when the Olympics are on, you always
know where I am when I’m not working or at school; in front of the TV watching
the greatest athletes in the world competing for the opportunity to be named
the greatest athlete in their sport and gain some fame for their country. When the Olympics came to Beijing, I had
found a few months previously that I was going to be serving a Chinese speaking
mission. Years later, I’m here in
Beijing, the site of the Olympics a 45 minute bus/subway ride away from my
dorm. Needless to say, I have been to
the Olympic sites MULTIPLE times and I have been able to do so many cool things
there.
The first time that I was able to travel to the Water Cube
and the Birds Nest was 2 weeks into the semester. I hung out a lot with Brandon for the first
part of the trip and he had invited me to go with him and our friend Sabrina to
the Water Cube… TO GO SWIMMING!!! Yes, the Water Cube has now become the
National Aquatics Center and they allow people to swim in the warm-up pool and
they are also built a water park within the Water Cube. So we met Sabrina and went swimming. It was one of the best experiences I’ve had
here. The pool is 50m long which was
very nice compared to the 25m pools that I have swam in previously. It felt
like it took forever to swim across it but it also didn’t feel as long swimming
a 200m. Something to note about swimming
in China; you have to get certified to swim in the “deep” end of the pools.
This certificate is achieved by swimming a 200m in less than a half an hour.
This is pretty pathetic if you ask me. I
have been used to swimming a 500m in less in 10min. (my fastest being 7:24) so
this was pretty easy. I was an amazing
experience.
Later on I would return to go back to the water park. The water park actually is pretty legit. It has a wave pool and about 8 slides worth
it for adults. One of the slides was
pretty intense. You stand in a glass
case that has water running down the back.
Standing there crossing your legs and arms, you wait to go. What are you waiting for? You wait for a recorded woman to say “3…2…1…”
and down you drop. The platform drops
from underneath you and you free fall down the tube until it levels out and
back upwards rounding around, the finally leveling out again. You are going so fast that you actually can
make it back up the hill and to the end with enough force that the water sprays
everywhere. There were slides that had
you used tubes for which were a lot of fun as well. The first time I had wen there with some of
the members from our ward and their friends.
On the way back we went to Karaoke.
This was my first time being in a KTV and it was pretty cool. We had reserved one huge room with 2 TV and
we paid for a buffet. It was a lot of
fun but I could not see myself doing it in the United States. Not much to say about this other than it was
fun.
Much later into the semester I also had the chance to go
back to the Water Cube with my classmates.
This was a little bit more fun for me because I actually knew these
people pretty well. I was really excited
to share this with them because I had fun the first time I was there and I love
being in at the Olympic sites. It was a
lot of fun to get the girls to go down the Speed slide and to spend lots of
time in the wave pool.
Sometime in November was Charlotte’s Birthday. For her Birthday we went to KTV. This would
be my second time going to KTV and it was a lot different compared to the first
time that I went. It was a lot of fun
but in terms of singing songs it wasn’t as good. People were skipping others songs and there
was quite a bit of drinking and smoking that was very fun to be around. It was good to support my classmate though so
it was a good time.
I have had some really great experiences so far and I
definitely will have more to write about.
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