July 17th in China, First day of training and Hot Pot!

We met in the lobby and waited for our leaders. Because I didn't have much time I just bought some muffins and a coke from the small store in the lobby for my breakfast. After Winslet (that is our chinese leader's english name) got to the hotel we headed out to the training venue. We walked to the east gate and waited for our bus there. We all just barely made it onto the bus we needed, which was a double decker bus. I ended up seating on like the steel storage thing in the back, because there were not enough seats, but at least I was on the top deck and the window was open next to me so I had a great breeze. But about half way through our trip the bus actually broke down! It was kind of funny, the bus stopped running in the middle of the street and we all had to get off, and others had to push the bus out of the way. Well because we were already running late our leaders loaded our cycling group, there is about 12 of us, into cabs and we headed back on our way to the training facility. We finally arrived at the starting point of the cycling event when is where we trained. We were shown several powerpoints, and given a couple lectures in the few hours we trained. To be honest, it was kind of boring. Then we were given a break and most of us headed to the small shop in the facility, to get ice cream. Then the power points and lectures started again. I think most of the stuff we were shown or told was kind of pointless, because we had either heard it before or it was something we didn't need to know. After a little bit longer the chinese student volunteers brought us all in another ice cream bar which was really nice of them. My ice cream bar was good, until I bit into a grape. Yes, a grape, a grape was frozen in my popsicle. It was so weird! First I had pizza the week before at Water Stone and the pizza has raisins on it and now I had an ice cream bar with grapes in it! Very odd. But anyways, after another hour of pointlessness we were finally done with training. Before we got to go though we had to pick up our uniforms, which was the highlight of my day. We have fully issued uniforms, consisting of 3 shirts, 2 pairs of pants that zip off to shorts, 3 pairs of socks, a hat, a jacket, a fanny pack (yes, a fanny pack haha), a water bottle and my favorite item brand new adidas sneakers. The shoes are actually really cool, and all our stuff is adidas and all of it has the official Beijing 2008 Olympic Logo on it! Yes, even the shoes! It is pretty cool. We tried the sizes of stuff on the very first week we were here and I double checked to make sure the girl wrote my stuff down right, but they still didnt get my order right. Everything fit except my shirts and jacket. They gave me larges instead of smalls. So I don't have my work shirts yet. After we all got our uniforms we were walked to the official starting point right near the building we had our training. It was pretty cool, it starts almost right at the temple of Heaven. We were shown around a bit and then told we were free to go. A few of us decided we were starving since the most we had had to eat was ice cream, so we all asked the leaders where we could find a restaurant nearby. This took a lot of effort because no one could think of a place or agree on a place to tell us. So while our group stood around waiting for our leaders to answer, this one man who was a street vendor selling kites, came up and started pushing the end of the kite rope into one of the boys in our groups hands. It was funny actually, this vendor was set on trying to sell this kite to Zach. Finally one of the leaders volunteered to take us to eat. We walked for what seemed like 15-20 minutes until we got to this hot pot restaurant that apparently is a favorite of the locals. We waited outside for our number to be called and in the meantime we sat and got to know our chinese student leader who led us to the restaurant, Frank is his english name. Frank was an interesting guy. We finally were led into the restaurant and given our own table. The hot pot is in the middle of the table and it is full of water that is seasoned and you just order the dishes you want raw and then boil it in the hot pot before eating it. We were also given bowls of sesame and ginger sauce (at least I think that is what it was) and that was what you were to dip the stuff in after you cooked it in the hot pot. We ordered noodles, potatoes, mutton, beef, crab, and several other dishes. It was ok, I liked the food but I don't think I would do it again. For one because it took so long, we were there for almost 2 hours and for 2 because I didn't get full on this stuff. It was a neat experience but I didn't like it enough to want to go back. After hot pot we got in the cabs and headed home. Leslie, Eric and I got in a cab with a hilarious driver. He was playing american music when we got in, Shawn Kingston, and he was practicing his english the entire time. The music was refreshing to hear actually, just because we hadn't heard any radio for a bit. A Nelly song came on and then the funniest thing happened, Michael Jackson's song "Beat it" started to play. Our cabbie said, "I like Michael Jackson" and then started to like speed and whip through traffic. He was totally getting into the music and it was cracking us up! Finally we got back to the hotel after this extremely long day. I was wiped out so I hit the hay not long after.