Olympics

We made it to an Olympic event the other night. Women's soccer between Japan and Norway. It was something we didn't think we would actually make. We had bought our tickets, for a pretty penny, while we were in the States, with complete assurances that our tickets would arrive to us in Shanghai. From the moment we arrived here, we have been trying to get the tickets. They were in Beijing, and all of a sudden we were told that we could only pick them up in Beijing. (A 12 hour train ride away.) As we kept pursuing the tickets, we found out that a courier had been used previously to get other tickets to Shanghai, and they had all been stolen. Our house agent, who has been remarkable in everything, was called, and she unbelievably pulled off getting a friend to pick them up for us, and somehow get them down. We still don't know how, exactly, but they arrived the day of the game! That was our first bit of excitement.

We decided to take a taxi to the event as Ridley wasn't feeling well and we didn't know how much walking would be involved. We got in the taxi, he took us to the subway station and told us to get out! We weren't too pleased, but the stadium was only about 4 stops away and when we arrived outside the subway, to the greeting of about 30 military personnel, we saw why the taxi driver had dropped us off. All the streets surrounding the stadium were shut down, huge boulevards just blocked from all traffic. There were several checkpoints to make it through as we made our way toward the stadium. The sidewalks had the various sports logos for the Olympics molded into the concrete, the symbols were also on the fence running alongside and they lit up, the planters also had the figures on them. No detail was lost. The stadium is huge. The sound system spectacular (not like our fuzzy sounding stadium systems), and the stadium food, yet another adventure! We had asked several times if there was food in the stadium as we were in need of dinner. Of course we are used to great food in the sports stadiums in the US, so when we were told yes, we had high expectations. All the vendors offered the same thing: "sausages" which were individually wrapped 1/4" thick, 7" long hotdogs, the closest thing I can associate it with - soft, chewy meat (of course I tried it!); "puffing food", which ended up being anything in a bag like our chips or cheetohs, only they were all kinds of odd "puffed" food that is edible and indescribable.

The game itself was really fun. Japan dominated in every way and won 5 - 1. We were surrounded by Americans who were over for the Olympics. We have been surprised how many people have come over just for the Olympics. Two sisters from the New York area were in front of us, full of spunk and fun. There was a family from the Bay Area in CA next to us, and right in front of them two more families with daughters from China. As it turns out, all the children were huge Peter and the Starcatchers fans and were asking for autographs from Ridley! Pretty surreal to be in Shanghai at an Olympic event and have kids all over Ridley! One of the girls in front of us is a fourth grade teacher, and is excited to introduce her kids to the books.

As our experience keeps proving, everything was well organized and our efforts in getting to the event were easy, and we felt very safe with guards, police, military everywhere. There are also more event volunteers than can be numbered, but this we find everywhere. The restaurants all have multiple workers for every customer: two people at the door ushering you in, about 4 - 5 hostesses to seat you and countless people hovering taking orders, bringing food and taking away used dishes. This is true in department stores, also. If you want to buy something, there are a multitude of workers to write up a ticket for what you want and you take the ticket over to one of many cashiers and pay for the item before you can go pick it up. This has to be done individually for each department. No crossovers here. But I regress, this was the Olympics blog!

We bought tickets for another women's soccer game when we got here, not knowing who would be playing. We are going tonight and we just found out it is the US vs. Canada!!!! We are thrilled. Paige is a huge Hope Solo fan (will be wearing her jersey), so we are really excited. We will try to post pictures of the venue when the girls download their photos. These are our corny hats for tonights game.