Click here to check out my first video from Beijing!

I took my new video camera to the Olympic Green today so y'all can have a better idea of where I work.

And like I say in the video, if you have any ideas for places you want me to film, leave a note in the comments! I'm not so talented with a camera, so I'll need all the help I can get.

UPDATE: Here's the Neighbors Go video link!

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Had another KRLD interview today!

Sorry I didn’t warn y’all before. Here’s the link, if you wanna hear.

They asked about the Great Wall, smog, and dumplings — click the links if you want to read more about those topics.

They also asked what I’ll be up to on 8-8-08 during the Opening Ceremonies. I have the day off, so I’m hoping to sneak my way on to the Olympic Green and find a way to see the fireworks.

I mean, let’s be serious: You know who invented fireworks? China. You know whose going to have an awesome ceremonial fireworks show in a week? China. You know where I am? CHINA!

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Due to the rain last night (see previous post), today was a clear, blue-sky day!

My friend Sam and I decided to take advantage of the weather by heading out to Chaoyang Park, where traders will exchange Olympic pins during the Games. We got a bit of a rush trading yesterday, and wanted to pass out as many pins as we could before the rest of our MU crew catches wind.

We took a subway to the other side of town and caught a bus recommended by some of the volunteers who now sit in subway stops looking to help lost foreigners. We found the park alright, but the whole east side was closed! Turns out, Chaoyang is where beach volleyball events are held, so the park was closed to prepare.

But Sam and I were determined. We hopped bus after bus, looking for an entrance. (Luckily, our BOCOG passes get us on public transport for free!) Finally, we see this huge Coca-Cola sign. This must be it, we thought.

Click (more) to see if we made it!
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Getting home last night was a nightmare.

Some friends and I popped in to this little Panera-esque coffee shop for dinner yesterday. As we leave, it starts pouring rain. Water and sand are flooding past us up to our ankles! I manage to hail a cab, so we hop in and hand him our university’s business card so he know where to take us.

He just shakes his head. Confused, I point to the business card, so he points to his eyes and to the card. Apparently, he’s too blind to read the card. And he’s our cab driver. In a flash flood. Awesome.

I tried to say “Renmin University” in Chinese but must have done it wrong because he took us to Peking University. After stalling around in an abandoned, flooded parking lot, I enlisted a Chinese guard to read my card to our cab driver, who finally managed to get us home.

As we left the cab, I handed him 15 yuan ($2ish) — about 10 yuan less than the total shown on the cab’s meter. The way I figured it, I shouldn’t have to pay for this cabbie’s excursions to other universities! He nodded, expecting not to get the full fare, and we left.

As I made my way upstairs, all in a huff over our adventure in the rain, another MU student came to my room looking for me. She said I’d left my phone in the cab, and the driver was nice enough to bring it back to the lobby for me!

Click (more) for the rest of the story!
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Trading pins is a huge part of the Olympic Games. People travel to the Games from all over the world just to buy and swap commemorative pins.

In honor of this tradition, the University of Missouri gave each of us 150 pins before leaving for Beijing. That way, we could swap them for Olympics pins while still promoting our school.

Turns out, our pins are worth nothing…unless, of course, you know how to trade them. Today, I stumbled upon a pin-trading center in Wangfujing, the shopping center I’ve blogged about before. In the Olympic flagship store is a Coca-Cola pin center, where a half-dozen pin traders have set up shop looking for pre-games traffic. If you have something to trade, you can swap it right there in the store from any of the guys wearing a vest decked out in pins. If you don’t have a trade, you can buy one of Coke’s pins and then swap it for the one you really want. That way, everyone’s happy!

Since our Mizzou pins don’t have anything “Olympic” on them, we could only trade them for pins from previous Olympic Games. But once you have something with the 5 rings, you can upgrade to a Beijing pin! Today, I snagged three: one from back when Beijing was just a candidate city, one of Beijing’s panda mascot and one with the Beijing logo and the Chinese characters for the last name “Sun.” I’m hoping to trade that last pin for one with the last name “Lin,” which is my Chinese last name!

Click (more) for, well, more!
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Warning: If you’re coming to Beijing and looking for Olympics tickets, watch out for frauds!

A couple of MU students were scammed out of as much as $1,400 by a woman aliased Beatrice Sanchez. She has ads up on Craigslist and VivaStreet.

My friends did all they could to confirm the legitimacy of their transactions. Problem is, “Beatrice” sent them a false website. As it turns out, VivaStreet doesn’t even have an e-payment system. The money my friends sent through the false website is just gone.

I know it seems risky to buy tickets online, but a bunch of us were desperate after the mad rush we had to go through earlier. (See posts here and here.) In an on-line world, buying tickets through a website seems like the next-best thing. Unfortunately, awful people like “Beatrice” are there to take advantage of students like us.

Just wanted to warn anyone who is thinking of buying tickets online.
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Here's the video of me on the CCTV 9 show Dialogues.

Thanks to Uncle Larkin for the link!

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So today is the exact half-way point. I’ve been here for 30 days, and I have 30 days to go! It’s weird to think I’ll be going home soon. Sometimes, I feel like I’ve really gotten to know this city, and other times, I feel like I have a lot left to learn.

In honor of making it halfway, I thought I’d revisit my top 10 moments from blogging with Neighbors Go:

10. Seeing Beijing from the top of the CCTV tower
9. Eating purple dumplings
8. Discovering “my” Bamboo Park
7. Riding a rickshaw through a hutong
6. Receiving a custom drawing from a calligraphy artist
5. Seeing Chairman Mao’s body
4. Receiving a Chinese headdress from that random woman at the Drum Tower

Click (more) to find out what my top 3 blogging moments are!
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I have never appreciated Mexican food so much in my entire life.

Last night, I had dinner at Tim’s Texas BBQ, a good ol’ Texas ranch house complete with Dallas Cowboy posters on the walls. They even had a Texas flag hanging, although it was upside down. Close enough!

Every time I told one of the Chinese servers I was from Texas, they would grin and yell, “Howdy, partner!”

For dinner, I had the burrito, and the most Mexican thing about it was that it was wrapped in a tortilla. Otherwise, it was BBQ all the way! The burrito was stuffed with brisket and slathered in BBQ sauce. Delicious! Not quite Mi Cocina, but still a taste of home.

Tonight, we went to Saddle Cantina, a Tex-Mex pub in the popular Sanlitun district. It was a big work get-together, so I met up with the Chinese students who working with me in the National Indoor stadium. Originally

Click (more) to read about how I introduced my Chinese friends to chili con queso!

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In his first email to me after my CCTV 9 appearance, Loh Kien Voon wrote me in an email that “Yes, to understand China/Chinese, one must look at the Chinese's perspective.”

Kien Voon is referring to the part of the CCTV interview when the host asked me if I thought Chinese newspapers were “transparent” enough. I told him I buy the China Daily every day because it is a way to understand the Chinese perspective on current events. If there’s anything I’ve learned here, it’s that Americans and Chinese view the world in very different ways.

The other day, a Chinese friend and I were talking about Chinese characters. She explained that the characters often resemble the word they represent. “Like this!” she said, excited as she drew on my Chinese phrasebook. “You will be able to guess what this means, easy!” Here's what she drew:

I had no idea. No matter how hard I stared at the squiggles, it still looked like the number 4 with a line down the middle. Or like a slide with guardrails. But something told me she hadn’t chosen the Chinese character for “slide with railing resembling a 4” for my first lesson.

I looked back at her with a blank look, wishing I could match her enthusiasm. As I shook my head, her face fell.

“It’s a mountain,” she said, confused. “Can’t you tell?”

Sometimes, when reports from Western visitors differ with what Chinese residents say, I have to wonder if one side is seeing a mountain while the other sees a slide…

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