I didn't think I'd be able to come back to America and tell people that I had happened to be studying at the city hosting the Olympics and not attended. Now I don't have to worry. I've been working my connections the last few weeks and am proud to say that I will have Olympic tickets.
I feel like I'm allowed to be excited now. And with the opening ceremony tomorrow night, I'll have a lot of chance for it. (Our teacher said that despite most of Beijing (and China?) having tomorrow as a holiday, we would still have class. "What if there are no students?" I asked. "Then we teachers will have a holiday, too," she replied. Sounds like a deal to me.)
That is, if everything goes mostly according to plan. One of my friends from America had tickets but wouldn't be in Beijing until halfway after the Olympics were over, so he readily agreed a few months ago to give me some. I only got the contact info of the person who actually had the tickets two days ago, and she said she had already allotted them to people. Out of the goodness of her heart, though, she said she'd give up a few of the ones she was planning to use personally so I and a friend could go see weightlifting on Sunday.
Independently of this, Emma found a website that the newly accessible BBC said was legit and bought a few tickets for a track-and-field event later next week.
Then Emma's boyfriend's friend is Chinese and said he didn't have any tickets, but he knew people. A day later he said he found a pair of tickets for handball. Not exactly the 100m dash, but who says we foreigners can't use 关系?
All told, I should be able to attend three Olympic events, and one of those should be in the Bird's Nest.
Our teacher said that Chinese people are all going to watch the opening ceremony on tv at home. That's practically the same as watching it from America, though, (except for the 29 locations where ridiculous fireworks will be set off simultaneously, so the whole city can be part of the action) so my friends and I are going to try to go to the Bird's Nest and watch things from nearby. 100,000 people will attend the opening ceremony, though, so maybe we'll think it's too crowded.
I'm excited!
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3 comments:
Is the Chinese you wrote "guangxi", connections?
Exciting!! It would be such a disappointment if you weren't able to make it to any of the Olympic events while you were in Bejing! I hope it's fun! I'm sure it will be! :)
wowweeeee! so glad to hear that working your connections finally paid off. the weigh-lifting tickets might be awesome. I hear the chinese women are likely to sweep the gold and that they are the team to beat this time. You may have really scored on that one!
So exciting for you! any chance you're going to any more classes at all? ha, ha.
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