July 23rd in China, Trip to the Training site!

Today we got up ready to go take a tour of the Finish point venue and area. It is located at Juyong pass at the Great Wall. It was so beautiful. I believe that our event has the best course/venue location. It has been said that this is the postcard event for the Beijing games because throughout the course the cyclists will pass several locations that are historic landmarks of Beijing and the surrounding districts. If you want to read all about the cycling event then click here. At the training site we took a tour of the whole venue, from the media work room to the press conference room and then outside to the press tribunes and finish line. The walking tour took up most of the day. While we were on it we met a lady who was in charge of BOB (Broadcast for the Olympics) she was an interesting lady to talk to, she spoke 6 languages, was from New Zealand, and has been all around the world working on games and championships and things like this. I was able to chat with her about the behind the scenes broadcast set-up. I gave her one of my cards and then we finished our tour which included walking on the course, seeing the finish line and standing on the medal podium, but we couldn't take pics of the podium for some reason. Security guards were everywhere and were very strict about the picture taking. We got to have lunch for free at the finish line restaurant while we were there and it was not bad. It was catered in. After lunch we were allowed a rest, well at least me and Blair were because we are working for VMC (Venue Media Center) not ONS (Olympic News Service). The volunteers working ONS were being trained and Blair and I actually haha, took a nap! LOL Yeah we took a nap on the new carpeted floor of the finish line venue.

We then were able to hear a little about what we would get to do from our really cool boss, named Candy. She is so cute and pretty much my favorite. :) We finally were allowed to leave after the ONS kids were finished with their training. So the whole MU group headed to the shuttle bus around 4ish but haha umm we sort of got lost. We ended up walking about half a mile the wrong way from the bus stop but eventually found it. We rode the bus for about an hour and then moved to a subway and eventually made it back to our University around 6 or so. I got cleaned up from the long day and then made myself some noodles with pasta. Now this was kind of interesting because all we have in the room is a water boiling pitcher. There is not a stove or anything like that. You just plug this pitcher in to the outlet! Haha so I kept having to add water and restart it over and over again to cook my noodles. I was able to find this bag of pasta and single serving sized pouches of Hunt's spaghetti sauce at the local grocery store. But all in all the pasta was a success and some familiar food was just what I needed. After my pasta meal I was able to do some internet stuff and then I watched the movie Wanted before heading to bed.