September 16

....Huh? What in the world is that?

AUGH! FIRE! FIRE! Oh God, however well we put it out?

.... How about with water from here?

Ha, that's right. I was there. Honest to goodness, I was actually right there in Olympic Park that fateful Tuesday night, thanks entirely to my host student, JJ ( not my personal host student exactly, as she's also hosting for Bridget, a Fordham student in TBC.) Since she worked as a volunteer at the Olympics, she was able to get tickets for us to enter the stadium, right before the end of the Paralympics, so we could see the whole complex in all its glory, lit torch and everything. Oh, happy day!

I'll be honest though, when we first arrived with the help of two of JJ's friends, Monica and Winnie (JJ was working at the time), the views weren't all that spectacular.

That was of course because a rainstorm was almost upon us, and by rainstorm I mean class-5 Killstorm, with some of the darkest, fiercest-looking clouds I have ever laid eyes upon. Even though it looked as if the apocalypse was upon us, JJ actually informed us that such brutal weather is hardly unusual, at least that's the way its been for the Olympics. I'm assuming that all the cloud-seeding the government did before the games paid off....well, somewhat.

Fortunately, the weather cleared up, blessing us with a vast array of spectacular sights as the entire park lit up like a jewel. Just the large shops there alone resembled gorgeous modern works of art, like the Audi store pictured below.

And now, I give you.... an absolutely obscene amount of pictures of the water cube!

After the little photo-fest there, it was on to the Bird's Nest.

Until being obsessed with Law & Order: SVU or making fart jokes becomes an official Olympic sport, this may be the closest that one of the Staysniak brothers will ever get to the Olympics for now.

While it was all very much spectacular, I must say I was disappointed by the Olympic flame. See? It barely fits between the fingers of a Staysniak.

It was without a doubt a simply spectacular way to end the day, which fortunately was exactly what I needed after waking up to a most hideous start. Now, as it turns out, the schedules we had received listing the times for our Chinese language classes had a most unfortunate typo; on Tuesdays, my section was switched with the section that always meets after my class. Being the mastermind that I am, it never occurred to me whether this was a mistake or not; I just thought it was a most odd way to do scheduling. So, instead of going to class at 8:00 AM like I should’ve, I waited patiently for 9:50 AM to roll around. It wasn’t until about 9:00 that a friend alerted me about the mistake, and in a frantic haste I sped off to the Qiu Suo Building, where the language classes were held.

That is, I sped off to what I thought was the Qiu Suo Building, but as it turns out I had no clue whatsoever where that was. I had to ask no less than three local students in atrocious Mandarin until I finally arrived at class at 9:10, sweaty, breathless, and groveling for forgiveness. Fortunately, my teacher held no grudge, and kindly forgave me and allowed me to take my place before simply going on with the lesson.

A word of advice to everyone - don’t believe everything you read … or at least don’t make the same boneheaded mistakes that I’m so very prone to making.