July 3rd in China, class, uniforms and phones!

I woke up around 7:00 am and was able to get in some chatting online before getting ready for the day. I was also able to take a hot shower since I had figured out how to use the hot water the night before. Around 9 my roomie and I headed to the lobby to meet with the rest of our group to head to the student activity building. At our meeting there we took group photos, we were given letters of commitment by the Olympic New Service, we were handed SIM cards for our chinese phones, and also got to try on different sizes for our uniforms.
It took forever to pick the right sizes of uniforms and shoes. All the sizes run small because chinese girls are extremely skinny and then the shoes were not in big enough for half our group. The girls had to try on the men's shoes to get ones that fit. HAHA!
I ended up finding everything that fit so that was lucky. We have Olympic polos, pants and even our adidas shoes are embroidered with the Beijing 2008 emblem. Pretty cool!

After the clothes fiasco, I got to meet with the reporters I will be reporting with and helping out during the games. I met the main cycling official and she was really nice. Her name was Candy. After meeting and talking about what I will be doing and when I will be training I headed across the street to get my photo taken individually for our Renmin University student ID. After getting all that taken care of I was able to get my phone card up and running on my new chinese cell phone. After all this the chinese students helping our group out led us to eat lunch at a different dining hall than the one we had the night before. It was pretty good, I had beef and potatoes over noodles with these sweet roll things. I got a lot of food for 2 bucks! The prices over here are awesome. The typical meal doesnt cost over 3 bucks and I have ate several for like $1.50.

After lunch our student guides led us to the bank where I was able to take out 1,000 yuan roughly 145 dollars from an ATM.
After the busy day of getting things in order I was able to sneak to the room for a small break before we had our lecture at 3. I was able to use my phone to call people back home and also get changed out of the nice clothes I had on into shorts and a t-shirt for class.

The class wasn't bad it took a while because it had to be translated because the teacher who was giving it didn't speak English. It was all about China's history and culture. After we got out of the lecture my roomie and I pretty much crashed into a small nap. I woke with plenty of time to get ready for a reception our group was invited to in the Angel Restaurant across the street.
I stayed for about an hour there, the food they had was pretty good. I really liked the dumplings and watermelon! :)
Around 8 pm I headed back to the room for some alone time. I thought a little about Billy and how it had been 5 years to the day since he passed away. When my roomie got back I didnt really feel like going out, she invited me to go with a group to a karoake club but I decided not to. I mean I have 2 months to get things in, dont want to wear myself out too soon! I just got all unpacked and organized and then I loaded some pictures from the Cardinals vs. Royals game that I went to onto facebook. I watched a movie called Waitress and then went to bed, ready for a big day the next day!