School's Out and One More Olympic Event

So the middle of August came around and suddenly we found ourselves ending our summer Intensive Language Program. After finals the EAP staff took all us students and our teachers to this 4 star hotel (would have been another hotel, 5 stars, I'd been told, but since it was the Olympics more important people were at that restaurant, so we had to settle) and treated us to this incredible buffet. While I was stuffing my face with sushi, chinese food, fruit, salad (hadn't had salad since leaving America), and an assortment of meats, the Korean women's Olympic basketball team walked by...just another day in Beijing during the Olympics, you never know who you'll bump into. It was fun hanging out with our teachers outside of the classroom setting. That night most of my class hung out with our teacher more and went to KTV (karoake), the popular thing to do with friends here in China. She insisted in treating us to snacks and drinks; it was definitely the first time a teacher had boughten alcohol for me. KTV's are all over China in ever city, and are usually take up a couple whole floors in tall buildings. Each floor has a bunch of private rooms that act as lounges with a big flat screen TV on the wall and people hang out and do karoake, English and Chinese songs. 2 am came around and we students, not the teacher, were the ones who insisted that we needed to get some sleep. I was stoked to get some sleep to prepare for the next day, 'cause I had tickets to the U.S. vs. Japan Women's soccer Olympic semi-final.

So two friends and I had bought these tickets before the Olympics began, not knowing who would be in the semi-final, but fortunately for us it ended up being the U.S. vs. Japan. We took the subway to the venue, the Workers' Stadium, to find the sidewalks crowded with fans of all nations walking to either the soccer game or to the boxing matches that were going on in the venue next to the stadium. There were a lot of scalpers too, which kinda made me wish I had waited to buy cheaper tickets, but it's alright...our tickets were really good, around the 10th row up front (and we because we bought the tickets from a guy who works for the U.S. embassy we were sitting mostly around Americans, although there was that funny couple from Austria sitting behind us). The game itself was really exciting: the fans were into it (Chinese people will always cheer for the team that's playing Japan, so the U.S. had plenty of fans), the venue was beautiful, and the game was exciting. At halftime the U.S. women were up 2-1, and in the second half added two more goals to end up winning 4-2. To add the experience, one of the U.S. players, Lauren Cheney, is a 3rd year student like me at UCLA, so I got to give her a shout out at the end of the game; I'm hoping to get one of my friends who's on the UCLA women's soccer team to get her to sign my ticket when I get back to LA. After watching the teams come off the field to the cheering of thousands of Americans, we made our way out of the stadium and headed back to the BNU. School was done, my Olympic experience was done, what was I to do now? Oh yeah...go travel across China for 30 straight days...