The End!

This is my last entry from the Olympic scene and thank you for sharing this with me (and nagging me when I fall behind on the posts.) If I were to blame my blog tardiness on anything other than the fact that I triple-booked my whole Beijing trip, I would blame it on the taxi rides, which are no less than 40 minutes no matter how near you think you're going. But you can learn a lot in a taxi: For example, it is completely appropriate for young children to wear bottomless onezies and pop squats on the sidewalk. The most important lesson may be that "ok" does not necessarily mean "ok I understand." (This will cost you at least another 40 minutes. Luckily that's only about $3.)

From riding elevators that have a maximum capacity of 18 and have the day of the week written on the floormat (someone changes it precisely after midnight) to trying on XXL Chinese clothes that will never fit me or randomly running into friends on the Great Wall, this was a month to remember. It's definitely nothing like the America's Cup-- in some ways good and some ways bad, but having a completely new experience means more in the end. There have been a lot of stories in the past few days involving scalpers, travel nightmares, duck dinner, trying to spend as much money as possible and only getting to $200 because everything's so cheap, running into more random friends, and finally going out socially... but I'll leave you with this: the 2012 preview rocked and I can't wait to get pumped for the next one.



This is how you get up to the Great Wall


This is how you get down from the Great Wall. The toboggan ride has 1 Yuan insurance (around 15 cents) and even this speed demon found it a little too unsafe. (Not unfounded as we saw 2 crashes).



Drying fruit in the market. It's just sitting on the wall by the street. My camera scared the flies away.