New friends

On a rare day I had time to venture out between the early and late baseball games, I met this wonderful Chinese family. They came in before attending an Olympic basketball game and saw I was alone and immediately invited me to join them. It was great. The son was a riot, a bundle of energy! They weren't even offended when I stuck to the veggies and tofu I ordered to cook ourselves in the hot broth in the middle of the table while they had goat. It was a wonderful time!

Water Cube and Bird's Nest

Wish I'd had time to go into these two gorgeous venues! I believe they're being torn down after the Olympics. What a shame.

More Great Wall fun!

Here are a few more fun ones from the Great Wall, the highlight of my trip. Home today and happy to be here after 24 hours of travel. Headed to Chipotle first thing for a burrito bowl, now to the bathtub for a soak and probably a nap and some laundry.

Great 'Wall' Day!

My colleague Kathy, a photographer from New York who is working with me at the baseball, and I went to the Great Wall on our lone off day Thursday and loved it despite the pouring rain! Much nicer than had it been hot and humid.



After hiking up some 2,000 steep stairs just to get to the Wall and then probably spending 2 hours walking and hiking the stairs on the Wall, going back down again and then hiking back up a second time looking for Kathy, I opted to take the chairlift down. Check out the sign below! It's quite hilarious.

Chinese tank

This tank was parked outside the main Olympic press center the other day. It was neat to see. One of the AP technicians took this picture with the teddy bear on it, before being told by the man knocking on the window from inside the tank to remove the toy. :-)

Olympic spirit!

Josh, Evan and Travis at Evan's bachelor party! Micah Rieke and Micah Florea ran around in these outfits the morning of Evan's wedding telling young girl admirers they were on the U.S. boxing team training for Beijing! And off I go tonight to China.

Sadie and pals go hiking!

Wish I could have been there!!! :-(