Badabing, Badaling!

High: After 10 days in China, we finally got into the Olympic Park! Seeing all of the venues up close rather than from outside the gates was great, and seeing them all lit up when we left diving at 10 pm was even better. The fountains were keeping time with the music, and there were kids of all ages enjoying the water. Adding to the atmosphere was the moon, sitting low in the sky, waning, and a beautiful bright orange.
Low: We didn't get to be on the Today Show. Alden has been dying to get on since we arrived, and with the timing of our events and the fact that you can't get in the Park unless you have a ticket for that day, it simply wasn't possible. We were, however, momentarily on the jumbotron at diving tonight, and Amy has been unsuccessfully trying to convince Alden that it's pretty much the same thing.
AHA: There was a typhoon in Hong Kong yesterday, which had us momentarily a bit concerned, but we were informed by some helpful Hong Kong residents today that typhoons there are common and that the weather should be just fine by Sunday. We remain dubious.

Well, as we discovered last week, the advantage of braving pouring rain one day is that the weather tends to be beautiful the next. We woke up to blue skies (a rarity in Beijing) and gorgeous sunshine, which was perfect for our day of outdoor touring. We made a quick stop at the Ming Tombs this morning before heading to the Badaling section of the Great Wall. The news that we were going to the Badaling section was a bit disappointing, as it is by far the most touristy and congested area of the Wall, and Alden had confirmed with the tour company ahead of time that we would be going elsewhere. But we were with 6 other people and it was too late to change plans, so we headed out and hoped for the best. When we arrived, our guide informed us that we would be able to take picture of the bears after we finished hiking...

Bears? Really? But there they were -- four small outdoor cages chalk full of black bears that were greedily eating the massive amounts of food being hurled at them by tourists. Really weird. Our guide gave us the option of taking the "slider" most of the way up and then hiking the last 25 minutes or so to the top, which sounded good to us. The slider turned out to be a train of individual cars -- the kind you see on rollercoasters, complete with shoulder restraints (which weren't necessary on the way up, but their function became quite clear on the way back down). When we reached the top our guide turned us loose to hike the rest of the way up and back down to the slider at our own pace. The section we were hiking up was the first part of the Wall to be restored post-1911, and it bordered the course for the Olympic bike races. There was a nice breeze as we started up the Wall and things were looking good for about the first 5 steps until we hit our first guardhouse. These are intermitent along the wall and unfortunately create serious traffic jams between the people going up and those coming down. The situation is by no means aided by the fact that as we mentioned earlier, Chinese people simply don't believe in lines. So we hurled our way forward and things dramatically improved on the other side...until we got to the next guardhouse and did it all over again. That said, the views were spectacular and trying to imagine how the Wall, which can be seen from space, was constructed by hand was mind boggling. Walking along something with so much history was quite an experience, and likely a far more comfortable one for us than for the woman we saw in 4-inch hot pink stilleto heels near the top. Amy commented while waiting for the slider ride back down that she was surprised they hadn't turned it into a roller coaster to make the ride its own attraction. Turns out, they basically have, though as near as we could tell there was no warning to the effect of, "this thing goes down much much faster than it goes up -- enjoy."

We got back to the hotel just in time to rush back out again in order to make it to men's diving on time. It turns out that somewhere along the way we got confused about our tickets. We thought that we had tickets to the diving finals, but it was actually the diving preliminaries. And we thought we had tickets to the men's soccer semi-finals, but it's actually the finals. Oops? So the diving tonight lacked the intensity of a final, but being inside "The Cube" was still very cool and our seats were great so we saw all the action up close. The two Americans did well, and we found ourselves sitting amongst a lot of friends and family of the 30 divers and their enthusiasm was contagious.

As our last night in Beijing comes to a close, we wonder when and if we will return. But for now we're excited about soccer tomorrow afternoon and a trip to the bird's nest.