At long last, a source

It helps to bring a diverse group on this sort of a trip, since Millie's ability to speak Spanish scored us tickets on the cheap for women's basketball. We scored the tickets early, so the girls went shopping, and I hung around the hotel and answered a few work emails. I got a taxi to the pearl market, met up with the girls and helped them carry some loot back to the hotel. We really liked our cabbie, and talked him into taking us to the hotel, and then to the basketball stadium. We got to the stadium just in time for the start of the first game and took our really great seats. in the corner of the lower bowl. The first game we saw, Russia vs Korea was a great game with lots of lead changes, but the second game, between Belarus and Latvia was kind of an ugly blowout. Either way I had plenty of Tsingtao and ice cream to keep myself happy. You can tell basketball is an american export, and the stadium and the little quarter breaks looked just like something we would have seen at home. Here's a video of the cool part of the game some sweet dancing mascots for your viewing pleasure. After the game we tried like crazy to buy some tickets outside for the second session, but the scalpers didn't seem to get that the more time that expired during the session the less we were going to be willing to pay for tickets. The other thing the Chinese hadn't quite familiarized themselves with was when to clap when the Adams Family song was being played. We grabbed a little dinner at a hotel right across the street, and then went back to the hotel to get ready to leave.

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Originally uploaded by jrherron

The next morning after we've gotten ourselves loaded into a cab the remaining members of the group managed to score some pool tickets an wanted to know if we'd stay. I couldn't and neither could Millie, but W dumped us at the airport, went back and even managed to get herself on the today show. Yes, I'm jealous. I barely scored a business class seat on the way home and dove right into work, where it's fair to say a weekend trip to Beijing for the Olympics makes you a bit of a rock star.