Cancel those American Airlines flights

If you are booked on American Airlines go ahead and cancel that flight now. Chances are if you don't, then American Airlines will go ahead and do it for you. Yep, that's right ... not only did they cancel our flight out of Nashville on the way out, they also cancelled our flight back into Nashville upon arrival from Shanghai. It's like winning the lottery, except not in a good way. Our unhelpful ticket agents were not much use, which is why I am sitting here in Chicago at 4:30 am as a very unsatisfied customer instead of at home with my family who I haven't seen for two weeks (did I mention that we had students crying when they found out that we couldn't get home until tomorrow?). We had a great trip to China and the Olympics, but unfortunately the thing that will stand out for our students is the trouble we had with the airlines (American Airlines). Go ahead and cancel those flights now and do not book with them in the future ... ever!!!

Not in Beijing anymore

It has been an interesting experience for me, when native Chinese look at me and try to talk to me in their language, thinking that I will understand. I usually start talking to them in English and that does the trick. For the past few days we have been in Beijing which has been dressed up very nicely for the Olympic games (no doubt, it looks like a modern city with all of the modern conveniences).

Last night we travelled to a city named Taiyuan, which is midway between Beijing and Shanghai. It is a little more representative, I think of how the vast majority of Chinese live. It reminds me more of a third world country rather than the bustling metropolis that we just left, and the image that the government of China wants you to see. It turns out that Taiyuan is the industrial backbone of the country, supplying coal and power to the larger cities like Beijing (they actually turn their power off if it is needed in Beijing), and as a result is the most polluted city in the country.

We went on a sightseeing tour of a city that is supposed to be preserved in the old ways, called Pingyao. It was impressive, but kind of sad to see the living conditions of the people and their standard of living. One of the other professors made the comment that if you took one of them back to the US and showed them how we live, they would think that we were millionaires. Makes me think about my great grandfather, and now I can understand why he would risk disease and death to climb on a boat for months on end to land in a place where you do not know the language. I am greatful that he did this, otherwise who knows? I could have been on the other side of things today, watching some rich foreigners get off a bus wearing WKU shirts, hoping they would buy some of my trinkets.

The agony of defeat

This morning we walked to the weightlifting venue for the men's 77kg weight class trials in the snatch, and the clean and jerk (they take the weights lifted for each and add them together for their final score). The athletes get to decide what weight they will start off with, and then have three attempts. If they are successful in the first lift, they increase the weight (they can do this two times) ... if they are uneuccessful, they have two more chances to make it. Below is a guy from New Zealand who placed in the middle of the pack.

There was one American who competed (Chad Vaughn, below). He was successful in the snatch, but set his starting weight too high for the clean and jerk and was not able to lift it on three attempts. He was one of only two athletes to not have a score ... the second lifter, a guy from hungary, had his left arm give out on him as he was lifting the bar over his head for the jerk (to me it looked like he dislocated his shoulder, but others in our group said that they saw blood indicating a broken arm) and then had the bar fall on him as he was trying to get out of the way. Needless to say, he was in some pain and was laid out on the ground for a while before being taken away on a stretcher. I have not been able to determine his status, but hope that he will be OK.

Olympic Archery

Today was the second day of Olympic events for our group. We had a chance to view the women's single archery competition, in which the field of 64 archers went head-to-head (best score from a running total of 12 shots wins with the loser going home). Scores range from 0 (didn't even hit the target) to 10 (bullseye).

The pictures below kind of give you an idea of how far away these targets are.

Got a chance to see the number one rated womens archer in the world (from South Korea). The Korean fans were crazy ... the American fans were less than impressed.

Forbidden City

This morning we went to Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. Security was tight at the square (you had to check all of your belongings in to a locker, and could not even take a camera into the mausoleum where Mao rests). Below is a picture of the WKU group in the square (we also had a flag/banner made up saying WKU's Olympic trip, but security was not allowing anything that may even look like a protest to occur ... we ended up taking the flag picture out in front of our hotel).

The following pictures are from the Forbidden City.
Reference to the "Great Stone Dragon" from Mulan...

This is just a small taste of how big the courtyards are ... the grounds are enormus.

At the end is a nice "garden" area (complete with gift shops).

Let the Games begin

Today was our first day of attending Olympic events. Since getting tickets to a single event during the third phase of sales (for 40 people on three consecutive days) is nearly impossible (we managed to get 2 days all together) we had to split the group. Part went out to the canoe/kayaking competition, and the rest of us went to see team handball. The atmosphere was subdued because of all the security checkpoints, but in this case I agree with the restrictions put in place (it was kind of eerie walking up to the venue with only a handful of people who had tickets).

We saw two games in the women's preliminary rounds, the first was Angolia vs Norway. Although Angolia is one of the best African teams, Norway is one of the best in the world and easily ran away with the game. It was great to hear the Norse fans cheering and see them wearing traditional viking costumes (some people really go all out!).

This group includes Janie Seto (a graduate student from Western Washington), Dick and Chris Dressler (Dick teaches communication disorders at Western Kentucky), Beth Weimer (a recent graduate from WKU), Travis Teague (program director of motor sports studies at Winston-Salem State), Jim Hand (also a faculty in motor sports at WSSU), and Jamie Robbins (faculty of sport psychology at WSSU).

The second game was a little closer and pitted Germany versus South Korea. (Speaking of crazy fans ... the Korean contingent was large and loud, but very entertaining to watch). This game was faster paced and featured a lot of great scoring moves as well as timely defense by Korea. They ended up pulling out a win. It will be interesting to watch the rest of the womens draw and following the teams that we have seen in person.

Rainy days and Sundays

This morning we had lectures on matrial arts (a championship kung fu master came and showed us a few moves) and traditional Chinese medicine (read massage). I think the students had fun because today was a little more hands on than the lectures we have had the past few days.

After lunch at a Chinese restaurant (I am getting way good at using chopsticks by the way) we were supposed to go to a beautiful valley just outside of Beijing. Turns out it was closed due to the cycle race that caused portions of the Great Wall to be blocked was well. A few people were disappointed, but we went to the zoo and saw the giant pandas (among other animals). Then the rain came. I barely made it to the bus before the downpour (luckier than other members of our group). Not sure how it will affect the Games, but the weather this afternoon was not the best for outdoor sports.

We had the evening free to try to get tickets to events if possible. A few of us went down to the area that has the most arenas and tried to find the box office to see about tickets. Turns out that there is no box office selling tickets because they officially sold out before the start of the Games. It was not a wasted trip however, as we got some pretty nice pictures of the Water Cube and the Birds Nest just outside of the security gate. We were not even allowed on the grounds (security again) but should be able to see more tomorrow when we go to team handball.

Summer Palace

This morning we had a lecture by Dr. Jian who spoke on the Chinese system for developing top athletes (appropriate for the start of the Olympic Games where China really wants to beat the USA in the medal count, and especially the gold medal count). One interesting note is that the man who has been acting as our interpreter, ... who produced the Opening Ceremonies, was wearing his WKU polo shirt that we had given him as a gift the previous time we met. It turns out that he had worn it to the Opening Ceremonies and had a lot of people ask him ... what is WKU? He told them it stands for "We Keep Understanding, We Keep United" ... and then went on to explain to them about our group and the students who are here from Western Kentucky University.

In the afternoon we spent a few hours at the Summer Palace. It is a place where the Emporers went to essentially vacation, a beautiful location surrounding a lake that seems to go on forever. I could see why these rulers chose the location and wish we had more time to take it all in (as with everything else we have done, it's hard to understand and appreciate thousands of years of culture in a couple of hours). A side note, they had a giant projection unit set up on the grounds playing the China vs Spain women's basketball game ... funny to see a spanish couple surrounded by hundreds of chinese and watch the reactions of everyone.

Great Wall & Mongolian BBQ

*Editor's Note: James couldn't access Blogger to post his happenings. I'm assuming this is a country-wide block and not targeted at James. Hopefully, the Chinese Government will not decide that email is too risky/dangerous/empowering to block that, too. I don't know about you, but I'll be a little more grateful next July 4! On with the news!


So yesterday was an interesting day. We started out heading to the Great Wall. We had to go to a different point than last year because the other entrance was closed due to the upcoming cycle race that runs right by. This section had a steep incline to get up (there were many, many people who were huffing and puffing on the climb - including me). The top was great because there was a little breeze, however the pictures all have a great deal of "haze" (or whatever you want to call it). It was interesting to look at all of the different people up at the top and try to guess where they came from (there were Brazilians - easy to tell because they all wore the same shirts, Australians, French, Indian, and of course Chinese). Afterwards, we had to take a circuitous route back due to other road closings (we heard an NBC employee who was at the Wall say that they all had to be out of their hotels by 3:00 pm and to the stadium because their section of the city would be blocked off). For lunch we ate at an authentic Mongolian restaurant. We each had an individual pot in front of us that we brought to a boil, and then put various spices and vegetables in to add to the flavoring. Next, a plate of thinly sliced beef was brought out, and we cooked it in our "hot pot" as some of our group was calling it. It was really good once we figured out what we were supposed to be doing. We had the afternoon off --- actually the students did, while the leaders tried to figure out what to do for the Opening Ceremonies (we thought about taking the whole group on the subway to a bar district, but decided against it due to the logistics, were going to check out the local restaurants but didn't because so many were closed so they could watch the opening, and ended up ordering Dominos and watching on a big screen that our hotel put up ... I think this was our best option both from a food standpoint as well as a relaxing standpoint for our group). The opening was amazing and I hope you had a chance to watch. One side note, our interpreter for the lecture the other day was one of the major producers for the Opening (so that's pretty cool) - he asked us to give him our opinions of it. Please feel free to share your impressions!

A day at the museum (among other things)

We started out the day with a lecture from Dr. Wu, who is a foremost authority on Chinese philosophy (as far back as the roots of Confucius, Daoism, and Buddaism) as it relates to the need to take care of the body. This has lead to the Chinese desire to care for the body in forms such as Kung fu, etc. It was a really informative lesson that our students enjoyed.

After lunch we headed to the Chinese Museum, which housed 6 or 7 floors of selected artifacts from various dynasties and eras. We entered the museum as official guests of the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games (BOCOG) , and had an hour to try to take as much in as possible. There were some great cultural items to view (above are the Terra cotta warriors), as well as a floor dedicated to the ancient Olympic games and Greece.

The faculty on the trip ended the day over dinner with the Vice President at the Capital Institute for Physical Education, furthering our relationship toward a student/faculty exchange program. It is exciting to think about the long term possibilities that a relationship with a Chinese school could have.

Tomorrow we have a trip to the Great Wall, and are trying to get into the USA house for viewing of the Opening Ceremonies (we'll see).

The long ride to Beijing

Instead of going to the basketball game on Tuesday night, a small group of us went to Old Shanghai to a famous restaurant (apparently Bill Clinton has eaten there, if you call that famous). It was really nice and made for some great pictures.





On Wednesday, there really wasn't much of a story to tell. We woke up, ate, and boarded the bus to the Shanghai Train Station. There, we were a specticle to behold ... at least to the Chinese locals who might have thought that we were an Olympic team of some sort ... they kept taking pictures and video of our group (some even asked to pose with us!). We told them were the team USA mixed synchronized swimming team...

After a 10 hour train ride we are safe and sound in Beijing. It was a long day of not doing much, but we are here and ready for the Games to begin.

A day in Shanghai

Started the morning out with a group breakfast at the hotel. At the buffet were a variety of pastry-type items, fried rice, sausages, and ... chicken feet. I had to try the chicken feet, because how often do you get to say that you had them for breakfast? Before we left on our tour bus, our Chinese leader, Jenny, had me leave the baby blankets Bess made at the hotel desk for Lady Gao to pick up. Bess (and sisters from church) made baby blankets that are being donated to an orphanage here in Shanghai. All of the people in our group, when they hear what the box I was toting around the airport was for, thought that it was something special. One of the adult ladies, when hearing that Bess made them exclaimed "Wow, that woman is a saint!" I also think that she is pretty special, and feel terrible to leave her alone with the children for two weeks, so please give her a call later today (or sometime soon) and often.

Our tour today was at a city about an hour and a half outside of Shanghai called Zhouzhuang. It made me think of what Venice would be like with canals and bridges. It would have been a nice tour, except the heat and humidity made it very uncomfortable. Oh well, a few pictures are below. As part of the pre-Olympic warm up, team USA basketball is taking on Australia here in Shanghai tonight. A large number of our group are going, but at $130.00 (US) a pop, I have elected to spend my time (and money) elsewhere. We are taking a train across the Chinese countryside to Beijing tomorrow.

Getting all of the difficulties out of the way?

Landed in Shanghai, but had a fun trip getting here … woke up late (4:35 am – told the kids to be there at 4:50 to leave at 5:00 am sharp) put in my contacts, brushed my teeth, applied a layer of deodorant, and kissed Bess on the way out the door. Drove a little fast on the way there, and got pulled over as I was pulling into the parking lot … I was the last one to arrive, so provided the rest of the group with a nice pre-parting show … the good news is that I got off with a warning for having a headlight out. Made it to the airport and see a big red CANCELLED next to our flight from Nashville to Chicago …“mechanical difficulties.” American Airlines ended up bringing in a plane from Arkansas for our group, and holding the flight from Chicago to Shanghai until we arrived. Once on board, we ran into more mechanical difficulties which caused us to be delayed for another hour. The 14 hour flight to Shanghai was the easy part. On the ground, after getting all of our stuff we were lead on a circular 3-mile hike in the heat and humidity to get to our bus (we ended up across the street from the same place where we started). Then it turned out that the bus company sent the wrong sized tour bus … so we didn’t have enough room for our luggage and had to put a number of bags in seats and in the aisle. Finally got to the hotel, had a traditional Chinese dinner at the restaurant, and am ready to sack out. Hope tomorrow goes a little smoother (I might even add some pictures).