The Water Cube Experience

All international managers were given tickets to events. I asked for tickets in the Birds Nest and the Water Cube because I wanted to see both stadiums. I did not care what I was going to see I just wanted to get inside to check it out. Lucky me got exactly what I asked for. 1 ticket to diving and 1 ticket to track and field...both on the same day.

Thursday morning I woke up and it was raining. My friend Josh and I got on the subway and headed to the Water Cube. It was a 10 minute subway ride followed by a 10 minute walk give or take. When we got off the subway we followed the mass of people towards the exit. This is hard to picture but I will try to explain it as best as I can. The width of the corridor to exit the station was probably the size of 2 tennis courts and as long as 2 football fields with escalators (called elevators here..have no clue why) and stairs at the far end. I kid you not..this walk through was packed wall to wall and people were walking so slow to get out.

I am sure some of you know this but tight spaces freak me out a little bit. What freaks me out even more is when there are tight spaces and it smells horrible. Josh and I are both trying to figure out what could be the hold up until we see this lady in front of us taking pictures. 2 girls, probably my age, were having a photo shoot in the middle of this whole thing. Fulfilling the obnoxious American role we started screaming saying move out and everyone around us looked at the two of us like we were crazy. Once we broke up the photo shoot it was still slow but we were close to the stairs. I had people bumping in to me, touching me, and coughing on me. I went through a bottle of Purell while all of this was going on.

We finally make it up the steps and discovered why there was the giant hold up. It was not the photo shoot it was because it was down pouring. Now picture this...we get to the top of the escalator and there is the big over hang just like any other train station. Well the Chinese refused to get wet so the hold up was every single one of them opening up their umbrella underneath the awning. I started getting poked by umbrellas and was about to lose it. We finally barged through and ran from the train stop to the Water Cube.

Soaking wet we finally made it into The Cube. This building is incredible. It looks awesome on tv and even cooler in person. The outside of the building is actually some kind of plastic that has air pumping through to create the bubble look. I was really impressed with it. We walked around for a bit to check out the entire stadium. Everything was very modern and very high tech looking. I will post pictures soon so you can all see them.

The Olympic sport of Diving??? Probably the worst thing I have ever watched in my life. There were 10 rounds and someone jumps probably every 30 seconds. As soon as the first person jumps the play some music and the second person gets ready. The first person gets out of the pool and the second one jumps. This continues until everyone goes. We were sitting there bored out of our minds. The event went from 10am to about 12pm. I think we left at about 10:45am.

When we left we decided to go out and find some good dumplings. If you recall, one of my first weeks here we went out for a great dumpling place and paid 14 usd for an amazing meal. Well, we had not been able to find the restaurant since then. We got in a cab and told the guy to drive us in the direction in which we thought the place was. About and hour later we found it. It took 3 weeks to find this place but it was so worth it. The 2 of us ate like kings for 10 usd. If only we had something like this at home.

I had tickets to go to the Birds Nest at night but the day was long and I needed to be at work the following morning at 2am. I decided to pass on it. I plan to get tickets for the para olympics to see the stadium.

My day was awesome. We had not had a day off in a long time so being able to relax and not worry about anything was really nice. A week from today, Friday, Media Village will be closed. I am pretty excited about that because I get to start the next phase of my olympic experience but at the same time everyone who I have become good friends with will be leaving in a week. There are roughly 30 of us at MV1 and I believe only 5 people are staying and getting sent to Athletes Village.

I will post my pictures later today or tomorrow so you can get an idea of what we had to deal with just go get out of the subway.