Feel Olympics in the haircut

I don't know if this headline made it to the American media, but it is indeed an article I read while scanning the latest Olympic news from Xinhua (the Chinese outlet covering the Games).

If you haven't seen it, let me sum it up as this: the people are excited; so excited, in fact, that this barber is giving boys free Beijing Olympics haircuts. I thought you'd enjoy the photo.

In other news, work was actually pretty productive today. This morning, we practiced Chinese and English phrases with our fellow volunteers. It was so fun to have them cheer for us when we got things right! One of the Chinese girls, whose real name is Zhang Qianyu, decided she wanted an English name so I asked her what letter she wanted it to start with. She said 'q' like her given name (this goes last, family name is first-- and stays the same even when women marry). Well, I don't even know of a name that starts with 'q'; so much for that. I asked her for another and she chose 'z' and so now her English name is Zoey.

Later, we took another trip around the velodrome to become even more familiar with all of the photo positions (areas where photographers can shoot from) and came upon a couple of people from the news agencies. One man shook my hand, introduced himself as Ken and asked all about what we were doing. Turns out he's from Getty Images and is the head of their Olympic operations. This is the big time. They have 75 photographers in China to cover the Games! How great to meet someone with his experience and knowledge of sports photography!

After lunch (hot boxed Chinese lunch with three waters and a Coke-- not as great as it sounds), we went through some more scenarios with Ron, our Australian photography staff expert, on what we should be expecting from photographers at the venues. Then it was time for the run-through of the Mountain Bike event. It was during this that I began to realize just how many people are required to pull off the Olympics. I don't think I'll fully get it until the Olympics begin, though. Two women from the Chinese team were out riding the course, and they were fun to watch!

We were on hand for the practice medal ceremony (I am pumped for our front-row view with the photographers!) as well as a mock press conference afterward. Being behind the scenes can be pretty exciting.

On the subway ride home, a guy sat between Alysha and I and started fanning himself. I, being on the receiving end of this, decided to tell him thank you, "xia xia". Well, apparently this made him think that I spoke Chinese, because he showed me the art on his fan, rambling away in Mandarin. Great.

I smiled politely and said, "No, only English", then remembered that we learned to say "I'm sorry" and "excuse me" today. Alysha and I said it and he actually understood us! If you haven't tried to pronounce Chinese, I can tell you it's quite difficult, especially where there are so many accents and such. Every time I hear a local say "you're welcome", it's pronounced differently. We were so proud of ourselves and I repeated the phrase over and over again for the rest of the trip: "dui bu qi" in pinyin.

That's all for now. Zai jian! Bye!