Blogs from Olympic Park, Beijing, China, Asia
Day 4: Olympic Stadium & Temple of Heaven
Published: December 20th 2011Asia » China » Beijing » Olympic Park
December 20th 2011
Today was a more low-key day and I (and my legs) am thankful for it! We started off by heading to Olympic Park. We had driven by the Bird's Nest, as the Stadium is called, several times already, and were looking forward to seeing it close-up. Olympic park is HUGE and was completely built in about four years to host the 2008 Summer Olympics. At the height of construction nearly 17,000 workers worked on the stadium. The 100,000 tons of steel used to construct the stadium was all manufactured in China. 7800 square meters of grass for the field was laid in 24 hours. The Bird's Nest cost $423 million (US) to construct and was designed by two Swiss architects based on studying Chinese ceramics. The stadium currently seats 80,000 people (321 less than Camp Randall). ... read more
November 17th 2011
In August/September of this year, we hosted a Chinese University of Minnesota student named Vivi at our home while she waited for her campus housing to become available. Yesterday, we were honored to meet her father and her English tutor who is an English professor at the University of Beijing. We visited Baihai Park where we enjoyed a scenic view of Beijing from the top of the White Dagoba and a relaxing stroll around Qiónghuá (琼华) Island. We then braved the Beijing traffic in a taxi during rush hour to visit The Beijing National Stadium (aka "The Bird's Nest".) The Bird's Nest is an incredible structure and we were filled with awe when we remembered the Olympic history that was made there in 2008. The Nest is so massive that it could likely take an entire ... read more
Old meets new, Tiananmen Square to The Birds Nest.
Published: September 17th 2011Asia » China » Beijing » Olympic Park
September 17th 2011
So its my turn to write the blog, so beer in hand and with Tomo on the opposite bunk getting Chinese lessons from our very nice and helpful Korean room mate here it goes! Today was has been much more successful than yesterday but this is probably down to our state of mind more than anything. Tomo apologies for his negativity, but our success did in fact start last night. After the blog had been written and finally uploaded we headed out for some food. The area near our hostel in Beijing had been transformed for the evening with many vendors selling street food in which you snack, buying many dishes from different sellers who shout franticly to attract your attention. An hour or so was enough and we were still shattered from the travelling so ... read more
July 5th 2011
In the morning we headed straight to the Summer Palace using the Metro, very easy. They pass your bags through a metal detector! And so cheap. Tresa's boyfriend Jose arrived from Spain the night before...felt lucky that every time i was near they switched back to speaking English!! But i must learn Spanish!! The Summer Palace is pretty big. It's a collection of buildings surrounding a lake. Some of the buildings originate from the Jin dynasty although the majority of it dates much later from the Qing dynasty. Again...this will get boring i know...but HOW MANY TOURISTS! We got stuck following a stream of them around the lake, but we finally broke free! Our main hope was to climb the steps to see the Temple of Buddhist Virtue. Pretty awesome. Checked out other buildings with less ... read more
March 13th 2011
So as I mentioned in the last Beijing post, Alicia’s friend was so kind to e-mail us an itinerary complete with how to get around. Today’s agenda had us taking a two different bus routes to get to the Great Wall, another to get to the Olympic Stadium & Aquatic Center, and another to get back to the hotel. Since we weren’t wise enough to print off this e-mail before leaving Zhengzhou, we didn’t have a hard copy to carry around with us. Just then, a wonderful idea…take a snapshot of it on the camera and reference that every time we need directions. We left our room and asked the front desk associate where the closest Bus 5 stop was and headed in that direction. We were thrilled when we saw that the first No. 5 ... read more
November 29th 2010
Here's a video of Tom's niece singing and a video of one of my students reading her letter to her other teacher, here's what she is saying: "Dear Mr. Fry, you are Mr.Hotdog. I like you. I want to swim in your milk, here's a drawing of poop." hahahahha!! so funny and cute!... read more
November 6th 2010
These photos are from about a month ago, some tourist-y stuff we did in Changzhou, coming soon: video of Tom's silly niece singing and video of one of my students reading her letter to "Mr. Hotdog". I really like my new job and the curriculum and the staff are amazing, I have fun everyday :) I am getting really good at getting around on my own and I can practice my Chinese with my co-teachers. ... read more
October 9th 2010
So even tho we LOVE our students at Changzhou we can't deal with how flaky the staff and people are anymore! They don't tell us when we are working or when our holidays our... etc etc, plus some other annoying stuff. So we gave them our two weeks notice and lucky for us our two weeks notice falls on the two weeks that the freshmen have military training, so we are thru with that school. I have very mixed feelings because I felt very attached to my students, I will miss them. We are moving to Beijing and living with Tom's sister Wentong, which is great because lots of family is close by, we eat with them 5 times a week if not more! Soon I am going to cook for them, they requested mased potatoes ... read more
August 25th 2010
I knew it was coming, I just didn't know when... they have started taking us to factory stores. Today we went to a pearl showroom and a jade showroom. These are big and overwhelming. They give you a short briefing on how it is made, how to tell real from fake, etc. Then you wander awkwardly around a big room with glass cases while saleswomen hover and say "Just look. Just give a look." And everything is much more expensive than it would be on the street. However, it is required by the government for tour agencies to do this, so I do not blame the guide. We went to the Summer Palace in the morning, which is arranged around a lake. There were tourists from Korea and Japan as well, and locals. One Chinese man ... read more
