Wo Jiao Don

Yes folks, I'm learning a little Chinese while here. Two incredibly important words are Ni hao and sia sia (hello and thank you). Our apartments seem quite fancy in that we have a doorman that doesn't like it when we open a door ourselves. His job is to see us coming and to open the door. Then he runs ahead and opens the next door for us. This equates to Door 1: Ni hao, Door 2: sia sia. The local staff at the family center will also be teaching us some words. One a day, in fact.

So when I get home I'll have some torturous tourist Chinese under my belt. It's great though being able to say hello when entering a store, because it is so important to them to say hello in that situation.

Local staff: So as part of running this family center for the athletes, we always hire local staff who work for us for about 3 weeks. It's been very interesting here, because so many people in China are doing such massive amounts of volunteer work to make sure the games go well, that Clair had a tough time convincing the workers that they would be paid for their work. They are great. They are all very excited to have us in Beijing, and have already been working very hard to make this a great place.

Today we assembled about 1000 of the 3500 gift bags we have to put together. Every guest at the center receives a backpack, a poncho (oh so comfortable in the Beijing humidity), kleenex, a memo clip, a cap-n-t-shirt combo, and a water bottle. It's a lot of work putting them together, and of course we don't have storage space for them all. So, it's been a logistical nightmare. However, we'll figure it out and get it all together.

The internet cafe, where I will be working, looks like some sort of space-age departure lounge. I may need to go back and buy leisure suit just to fit in there. :)

Well, I'm exhausted and needing some rest so I'm going to head to bed. More tomorrow.