Getting Flash Quotes.

This is the main task of a flash quote reporter and I find myself failing to perfect this.  In our practice runs, I can't write quick enough to retain the majority of the slur of words emitted.  I messily scribble words and fragments of sentences, but I need more practice, which is thankfully what we will be doing for five hours tomorrow during training.    

Flooding.

Yesterday was the celebration of yet another Iowa summer birthday.  Fighting off a cold, I left early at 10:30, I emerged from the basement joint to find the streets flooded.  It had been an hour tops since I had entered Pyro's and within that time the water had collected and had risen to mid-calf level.  I ran back inside to alert Shanti to bring her camera and we began a short documentary of the chaos.  (Reporting live from Beijing, flooding in the streets, as I get closer you can see the waves rolling toward us.)   Spectators crowded the sidewalks, but cab drivers continued to slowly push through the milky coffee colored water.  

I know I said when the Iowa River flooded, I would not trust the sanitation, but the water of China, well, you really could grow an extra arm.  

This, however, is what happens when Beijing tries to emit missiles into the air to tame the air pollution, by making it rain.   

Just as different and unique each interior of a cab is, lace, seat belts with missing clasps, etc.,  so are the men, occasionally women, who drive inside them.  Today we rode with my favorite driver of the summer, by far.  Although we had been told that most cab drivers of Beijing would be taking English language lessons to prepare for the large mass of foreigners entering the city, in our experience, we had found this to be very untrue.  If they knew hello, it was a great surprise.  Yet this driver made an effort to speak English, but this wasn't the reason of his charm.  My respect for him came when he pointed at Nick, sitting in the front seat, and said you beautiful.  Fearless, he grabbed Nick's credentials and focused on his picture and said, this not.  Diane and I giggled in the back seat.  This guy was funny.

I thought it was funny...

A cause of the homesick blues mixed with a bad case of China complaints had been drifting from person to person (some people, however, keeping it longer than others).  During the past week, I had finally caught the bug, with the combo of a real sickness involving a sore throat and nasal congestion (possibly a side effect from the increased smog of the past weekend).  After looking at pictures from the past month and a half I realized, maybe for the first time, just how much I really did like China.  Still it has its hiccups, the general lack of manners, the dirtiness of it, and what we can only get mad at ourselves for, the lack of communication, at times.  But China has a charm to it that can only be explained as, that's China.  As I was explaining this epiphany to my friend, Diane, on the cab ride to work, mid-sentence, the driver hacked a major loogie.  We just looked at each other and laughed.  Definition China.  

Seven blocks away from the tennis venue, before the cab driver turned, he flung over his seat beat in an attempt to make it look like he was wearing his safety belt in front of the security guard and the police officer.  I guess he trusted his driving enough that he would never get into an accident.

On the ride home from our office, the tennis venue, we were chatting about two guys in our group and their characteristic independence.  Just after that statement, I looked across the street and both of them were standing on the sidewalk with their bikes idle in their hands.  I rolled down the window to say hi. As I was waving, a passing taxi pulled up beside and with a big smile, blew me a kiss.  It was quite funny.  I guess he thought our excitement was for him.  Five seconds later he drove off with an even bigger smile and his parting words, buh bye.  

Immediately once inside my room, I hopped onto my computer to check my email.  Inside my inbox was an email from the photo editor of China Daily.  Judy, the journalism professor who was responsible for our China trip, had told her my photos were great.  The editor kindly told me my photos would make China Daily more interesting.  I knew my photography had improved greatly over the past year, but I was still shocked that one of China's biggest newspapers would be asking for my photo submissions.  The greatest irony of it all was that the day prior, my roommate and I (both journalism majors) had discussed how great it would be to get published by an international publication and that the China Daily, an English daily newspaper, would be the icing on the cake.  

Still in a good mood after Judy's birthday dinner when she told me my writing and photography would be great for a regular blog on the China Daily website, I went for a celebratory run.  I hit a cross roads, and since I was not yet tired, I continued my jog. I ducked under the dimly lit bridge.   Flashing lights approached and I darted over the railing to avoid the oncoming car, as it honked inches from my crumpled body.  I hadn't realized there was a ditch dividing the sidewalk and the road I was on before and in my leap over my foot slipped inside the wet murky water.  My ipod, still playing, sang the words, "I've got my new shoes on and everythings going to be alright."  

I brushed myself off and continued on my run, deciding it was indeed time to return back home, with one mud coated shoe following the other.        

  

Photo at the Zoo.

Pander Zoo

Seeing the panders, for real.  I had to be work at 1:30 today, but rather than sleeping in, scouring the internet.  Diane, Stacie, and I went to the Beijing Zoo.  We were told China's zoos are extremely depressing because the animals do not have proper sized cages and the sanitation is another issue.  I went expecting the worst, imagining caged lab animals.  What I saw instead was surprisingly better than previously pictured, except for the large cats display of tigers and lions.  

We spent aproximately two hours there, in that time, Diane touched a zebra.  Something that would never happen in the U.S.  We decided before we even got to work it was a good day.  And I guess it was the attitude that kept giving because at training we practiced press conference questioning and writing.  For the first time this summer I felt like I was actually doing the job I came thousands of miles to do.   

Test One, Two.

We had our first of two tennis test events.  Set up to check the security of the venues and to make sure everything, and more importantly, everyone knows what they are doing.  This includes me, an ONS flash quote reporter.  

It seemed odd that the first time I was watching a live tennis match was sitting behind the press tribunes (the blue desks where I should be seating, however, the seats were missing) at center court at the Olympics watching two unknown Chinese athletes painstakingly rally.  It was miserably hot, even sitting in the shaded area of the stadium.  I felt my concentration waning as Sandra, our tennis expert, explained passing backhand shots, break points, and other key game turning moments.  My notes were sloppy, but my understanding of tennis was starting to become clear.  The match ended unexpectedly, however, at one set.  All the flash quote reporters bolted from our sluggish shells and ran down the stairways to the air conditioned basement to meet the players at the mixed zone.  We missed the winner, Li, but managed to stop Sun before he fled to the locker room for a much needed shower.  Because Sun only spoke Chinese, it was interesting asking questions using a fellow Chinese volunteer as a translator.  The flash quote reporter taking down the words, nervously shook as she quickly scribbled.  I can only think of the nerves we will have at our first real tennis match.  

Day Off.

Elena told us we had one more day off before we had to dedicate the rest of our days to tennis and BOCOG.   I woke up early to make use of these precious 24 hours.  The day started out with my usual yogurt, granola and fruit salad at Lush.  I broke from my routine when I ventured out on the subway on my own.  I took the new blue line, number ten, to the Llama Temple stop.  I felt like a true Beijinger, if only for a moment, as I confidently moved through the transfer without a posse of friends following.   Though this wasn't difficult as I wanted to visit the Llama Temple, which is conveniently named a metro stop for its proximity to the station.  Outside in the humidity, I looked up and saw the decorated walls of Beijing's famous Buddhist worship site.  Walking the streets before the entrance, tourist shops dominated.  Inside were laughing Buddhas, bundles of incense, and smiling Chinese faces.  Come inside.  I resisted buying the incense.  Inside I saw that many did to respectfully worship Buddha by burning, as requested by the signs, three sticks of incense.   As the second temple that I have visited in China, this one was distinctly different.  The Llama Temple was filled with actual Monks, although filling jobs as security over the many Buddhas, rather than actually worshipping.   People were deeply engrossed in praying, despite the many tourists hovering around the arsenals (that would include me).  To try to preserve the last scrape of sacredness, the Llama Temple prohibited photography inside the temples.  Having enough, I left through the emergency exit door (no alarm sounded however).  

It was miserably hot by this point.  Imagine Iowa's humidity trapped in a small bubble.  That is what Beijing is like as a result of its horrible pollution.  I walked across the street, pass the shops with big bellies of Buddhas, and followed the sign of a Beijing Hutong.  The narrow road winded around the corners of the old homes.  I found an ice cooler with Magnum ice cream cones to cool off, for a cool price of 5 kuai.  The road ended and opened into a bigger roadway, one wide enough for two cars to pass by simultaneously.  A big red lantern caught my attention and beside it read a sign for classical music and a tea courtyead.  I was curious and at first thought, my dad loves classical music.  I should have known, I'm in China, their definition of classical music is going to be very different.  And it was.  Classical refers back to old Chinese instruments.  Inside I found a woman playing on a harp-like instrument.  I listened as I ordered my tea and sipped to the afternoon's delight.  It was another check on my summer's to-do list.  

I followed the corridors of the hutong back to the subway to meet with some girls at the Beijing Blue Zoo.  Given directions through the phone, I navigated myself half-way across the city to meet them at the gate of the aquarium.  Apparently, I'm only directionally challenged when I'm sitting in the passenger seat of a cab trying to communicate in Chinese.  It turned out that the aquarium wasn't worth the 75 kuai we spent, but seeing the mermaids inside the shark tank made it worthwhile.

We walked back to the subway, they went home, I changed subway stops to go to the real zoo and met up with someone else.  Only after we did find the zoo, it was just ten minutes before closing.   We tried to explain using motions of taking pictures and saying the word pander, that we would be quick, but they didn't back down and the mass of people leaving the gates told us we should leave too.  Plush pandas are sold everywhere, China's iconic symbol.  But because Beijing has an accent r in their Mandarin when they pronounce panda it comes out more like pander.  Now almost daily I use this word.  "Pander, pander."  

Disappointed, we occupied the time by taking the subway to Tianamen Square to see the lowering of the flag at 7:30.  We arrived at 6:15 and already rows of Chinese were lined up against the fence facing the flag pole, waiting.  We people watched until the guards closed off the busy intersection of traffic and marched swiftly to the matched beat.  Half an hour the lights turned on to set Mao glowing.  This was our cue to get back on the subway to Wangfujing to go to the night market.  

Across the street and a block away, rows of street food vendors await.  Tucked inside the somewhat hidden food mysteries are all kinds of meat and creatures on a stick.  With encouragement, I tried scorpion, seahorse, squid, and chicken.  Halfway through, I wanted to become a vegetarian.  Diane, my fellow food critic, was already one and just laughed at my looks of disgust.  The night vibrance was fun and you just have to smile when vendors poked you with still moving scorpions dangling on a stick.  My suggestion of advice, stay away from the one kuai meat.  It can't be good if that is half the price of a one way ticket on the subway.  

We ran to catch the last returning subway home to Wudaokou station at 10:45.  Overall a very successful day.  Hopefully I'll get one more of these before the real craziness of the Olympics sets in.