Olympic Water Cube

Our final full day in Beijing started out by attending the FINA Diving World Cup in the Olympic Water Cube which is the Olympic venue for swimming and diving. We watched the quaterfinals of the men's 3 meter springboard competition. In China, it's called the Good Luck Competition, a pre-Olympic competition to check out the building facilities. It was quite impressive. The Water Cube is located next to the Bird's Nest Olympic Stadium and the rest of the Olympic Mall area. You can see from the photos how smoggy it is today - the worst day we have had for smog. The characters were outside too for the Chinese people - this was Nini that we stood next to. Inside, a Canadian won the preliminaries today with China finishing 2nd and 3rd and the 2 US divers 5th and 6th. It was a beautiful building and exciting for our first time ever in an Olympic venue. Even for a quaterfinal, it was packed!

Then we went to a local restaurant (remember this is all less than a mile from Billy's apartment, work and our hotel). Billy likes lamb chaun'r (or skewers), and this restaurant specialized in them. The picture is he and Jingyi eating them. they were excellent! Then we went shopping in a local supermarket (not quite Byerly's!) to buy the spices so Meg could buy the spices to try them at home. Then we visited Billy's company offices on the 10th floor of a local building and have included a picture of him at his desk. We then returned to the hotel and tried a practice packing run. So far it all fits, so we'll see what happens! On our way back to the hotel, we saw our first car accident. With all of the people, bikes and right turns, we hadn't seen an accident until today.

Billy and Jingyi joined us at Grandma's Kitchen, a very Americanized restaurant. I had french toast and scrambled eggs and Meg had a BLT. It was the most American food we have had on the trip. We had to say good bye to Jingyi tonight and hope we see her in America. She and her mother were wonderful hosts for us and have been very nice to Billy. He stays there on weekends to keep them company and it helps him pass his time as well. We catch a plane at 9AM tomorrow morning to Tokyo, then on to Detroit and home after an incredible trip. We gain back the day we lost coming over - we leave Beijing at 9:05AM Friday morning and arrive home at 4PM Friday afternoon! What an incredible trip! Billy was the perfect host and he is well acclimated in China. He will be moving in two weeks to a new apartment - farther from work but closer to Jingyi. It's an amazing country whose economy is growing at a 12% rate and they have a huge trade surplus, so the growth potential is enormous and Billy hopes to take advantage of the opportunities.