Sitting in the Sun for 6 Hours Is Probably Not a Good Idea

This Tuesday, was probably the most fun I have had in Beijing. Golze and I have beach volleyball tickets (probably my favorite Olympic sport). I had video of the day, until my camera destroyed all the evidence, which probably better, because I don't think I was supposed be filming from the angels that I was at, but you gotta love the beach volleyball uniforms. Anyway, our day started with early morning breakfast out a local Hangzhou 小吃 restaurant, steamed dumplings and wanton soup is a great way to start the day. Then we road our bikes to Chaoyang park to watch beach volleyball. At the time it seemed like a good idea, but Chaoyang park east gate is a lot further than we anticipated and the road there has one of the biggest hills inside of the fourth ring, which actually isn't really a hill its more like a slope. It was a work out, but my fat ass is out of shape. Once we got there, the first game had already started. It was the USA vs. Cuba. The USA team is ranked number one in the world and they showed Cuba why they are ranked number one, giving them freedom spikes to the face. They won the match pretty handily, we were waving our Americans flags in full support with every point. There is a pretty good chance that we are on TV, but we will never know, gotta browse Youtube later.

One of the oddest sights was the beach volleyball cheerleaders, I didn't have cheerleaders in high school, but Golze said they were worse than his high school cheerleaders, and I am inclined to believe him. Actually, the cheerleaders weren't that odd compared to the fact that between the USA and China game they taught the fans how to Cheer. They taught them how to do hip hop hurray (waving your hands side to side), how to do the now infamous Mexican wave (in slow motion and fast motion), this dance that they were supposed to do when someone got a block (moving your arms up and down in the air), this dance later became the most annoying when the Chinese team was playing because they ended up getting a lot of points and the song that played with the dance was not only stupid but annoying, there were other Cheers too that I don't remember. And once the Chinese men's team started playing the started to use it. The Chinese men's team played Estonia. And the Chinese announcer during the game was extremely bias, I noticed it during the USA game his bias, in the fact that he only had the fans Cheer for Cuba, but it really came out in the Chinese verse Estonia game. I understand the fans cheering hard for China, but the announcers bias was on the level of unsportsmanship and the little stupid Cheer songs were only for the Chinese team, like for rest of afternoon the block song was only played a handful of times, to my happiness but it was played to the extreme during the China game. I thought the Olympics in terms of commentary and announcers was supposed to be fair and balanced, but it is about as fair and balanced as Fox News. Anyway, Chinese team ended up beating Estonia in a close match.

For the rest of our Six hours baking in the sun at the match, Golze and I decided to bet on the games. He ended up coming out ahead 20 kuai, I guess my beach volleyball knowledge is not that great. The last four games were Brazil Vs. Austria in a very close match, Greece Vs. South Africa, Norway Vs. Japan, and Greece Vs. Mexico. All I have to say is Greek women are berry niiiice, Wa Wa Wee Wa.

Oh if you want to see pictures tell Golze to post them.

After baking in the sun and being on the verge of dehydration and suffering massive sunburns (mostly Golze), it was time to ride our bikes back to get food. The bike ride was one of the most tiring things I have ever done, again I am a fat ass. I think it was like a 3km bike ride, but it was so tiring. We ended up at Purple Haze, nearly eating massive amounts of rice to replenish all our energy.

The night ended at Haoyun Jie for beers and then a trip to Beijing's first Ethiopian restaurant. I have never had Ethiopian food before, but it is damn good. I highly recommend it, that's if you can find the place. It is in the most remote hidden part of the city, it took almost an hour for me to find it. I think I walked pass it like five times.

Yesterday, was a good day too. I was pleasantly surprised to receive a call to see Olympic soccer. It was the US vs. Nigeria and Argentina vs. Serbia. Even though we were rocking the US flag pretty hard, the stupid Americans ended up losing anyway. For some reason, a guy on the US team decided to get a red card in the first two minutes of the game and once that happened it was pretty much all down hill for the US. They ended up losing 2 to 1. The second game Serbia fought pretty hard but ended up losing, the goal keeper for Serbia had two amazing saves on penalty kicks. The most interest part of the Serbia game was during somewhere around the 68th minute, the Chinese started to boo Argentine and relentlessly Cheer for Serbia, and the whole reason behind this is because they wanted Serbia to score so that they could see Maradona (the who game they were screaming his name, literally, there was a kid sitting next to us, screaming for Maradona like a girl screaming for New Kids on the Block, same pitch and everything) from Argentina play. The only way Maradona was going into the game is if Serbia scored to make it close. So they end doing it until Argentina scored again in the 78th minute, then everyone just left the stadium.

Surprisingly, soccer also has cheerleaders another sport I was surprised to see cheerleaders at, but unlike beach volleyball, they also have two men cheerleaders. And I think James will agree with me on this, but the men cheerleaders were way better than the women. Chinese women cheerleaders need to step their game up.

The soccer game was the first time where I saw them do a complete Mexican wave on their own. I was pretty excited for them, until they started to continue to want to do it. Also, Kobe was at the game if that means anything to anybody, I guess the game was pretty important. I wonder if he was booing too..

Highlight of the Day: I am going to finally see the great game of team handball.