My journey to China - Beijing 2008

August 30/31 - Hello West Palm Beach...

2008-09-01T08:58:00.000-07:00

I had a layover in Charlotte, North Carolina and from there flew to Miami. When we were flying into Miami, I could not help but repeat the song "We are going to Miami, welcome to Miami" in my head as I was so happy to come back home. Thankfully for my neighbors, I could only do it in my head :) as my voice was completely gone. I had felt a cold coming around since the night before leaving Beijing, but after a couple hours on the plane to Charlotte, it came through big-time - no more voice.

And, it has not come back since. I hope and pray that it will return back to me until tomorrow since I am supposed to teach two classes. I will continue to sleep and rest and that way hopefully I will be fine.

My friend Shiela picked me up from the airport Saturday night and it feels so good to be home! It feels so good to cook again and eat proper food, get regular sleep, and enjoy the clean air and ocean breeze. It feels so nice to dress up again too after weeks of wearing uniforms! Home sweet home....

I am now waiting to see when God will send me my friend Freddie, my red Cardinal, and his wife Nancy to my balcony again. I've heard them yesterday but have not seen them yet...a few amongst you know the significance of this bird and his bird wife in my life. For all others: This bird has been my godly messenger over the past two years, at first in Tallahassee and now in West Palm.

And he continues to use him in my life. John, one of our security personnel here at my condo welcomed me earlier today with a sense of urgency describing to me the following: Apparently, my cardinals were not around for weeks and weeks after I left and one day John said to one of his co-workers, Curtis: 'You know the cardinals, Beery's birds, they have not been around in forever'. Well, the next week, when he came back to work, Freddie and Nancy suddenly were flying around in the main condo area where he works like crazy, through the parking garage, and so on. "It freaked me out", John said. "Beery must have communicated with the birds that they should come see us". His story made me smile and I just said to him "That was God speaking to you and confirming to you what I had shared with you about the birds and how God has used them in my life". I do not know John's spiritual standing overall, but he said right away: "I know, I know it was him".

Isn't it cool how God works and how he reaches people in the most amazing ways?

In this context, going to church yesterday was for sure a huge blessing and I am looking forward to returning to my godly work environment at PBA this week.

In regards to my experience in China I think it will take me a while to process everything. It has been an exciting and interesting journey, but some things I think I can only process and understand at a deeper level after a while including the spiritual significance and meaning of many of my experiences. I know that God will show me in his time.

It's been a pleasure sharing with you and I thank you for your feedback and your support. For all those of you I met during my trip and especially, Kitty, my Chinese tour guide, and Mary, my sweet Chinese hotel staff - meeting and knowing you has blessed me tremendously. I hope we will stay in touch. To all of you: Happy Labor Day! Until next time and may God keep you in his care and bless you!

August 29 - Good-bye Beijing...

2008-09-01T08:26:00.000-07:00

On Friday it was time to say good-bye to Beijing. Leaving the hotel early in the morning I was on a flight to Frankfurt leaving Beijing Capital airport at 10:30.

It was a good decision to leave early as I found out at check-in that the airline was going to charge me for the remaining extra luggage I had with me. I knew I still had too much, but thought I'd try and see if they show some mercy for Olympic employees....but instead of showing mercy they were very strict in their Chinese way...Oh well. It was quite frustrating, but I decided on the spot to just mail the extra bag and that way also decrease my hassle with luggage overall.

It certainly proved very beneficial in this situation that I knew the airport so well and did not lose extra time finding my way around. The post office was quite busy, which is not surprising when you look at the amount of luggage allowed and the price they charge for excess luggage. I mailed the bag and all I can do now is hope and pray that my box that I mailed from the city and my bag that I mailed from the airport somehow make it home.

In the picture from the airport you see that it was another hazy, smoggy day in Beijing. The weather and environmental conditions I will certainly not miss by any means. I cannot wait to breath fresh air, regularly see the blue sky, and smell the ocean again! I've always appreciated that so much, but this experience certainly reinforced that appreciation.

The flight was uneventful and a friend of mine who worked for the same organization as I did was on the same flight, sitting just a few seats away from me. So in between we took some chatting breaks, which was nice. My whole family, except for my brother and his wife, was waiting at Frankfurt airport when I arrived and I had my 5-year-old niece jumping into my arms right after walking through the gate... it was so nice to see everybody one more time before returning back to the States. It will probably be close to a year before I see most of them again.

My aunt gave all three of us sisters a rose at the airport...

Those of you who are German, of German decent or have visited Germany frequently, or certainly those who know my family can probably guess what was next on the agenda that afternoon: Yes, exactly, Kaffee und Kuchen. My sister had baked a couple of delicious cakes and we all shared while eating. Not that this was enough, later on a delicious barbecue with various home-made salads followed. In response to my thankfulness my sister responded "Well, we have to make you miss Germany so you come back soon" - that was very sweet. In between, I handed out my little gifts from Beijing to all of them. My favorite ones were a beautiful Chinese tablecloth for my sister and very cute Chinese pyjamas for my nieces for their birthday. As you can see my little niece enjoyed her Beijing 2008 mascot.

At night then I had some repacking to do as I had left some items with my sister to take with me to the US. Again, those who know me already know what that might have been.....mostly food items, especially baking stuff that I cannot get in the States. Yes, my friends, the next Black Forest Cake is coming :). I also was able to open the b-day gift from my little sister that I could not take with me to China - A Germany/European Union license plate saying "Dr. Beery" - so you all will be able to recognize me easily in my car in the future! :)

The next morning then, after an extensive breakfast, I was off to the airport again and on my way back home. West Palm, I am coming....

August 25-28 - Cleaning up

2008-08-28T05:02:00.000-07:00

After bringing our last group of guests to the airport Monday morning the VW/Audi hospitality program for the 2008 program was over. Now, it was time to clean up from the previous weeks and prepare for our departure. The hospitality suite had to be cleaned up and all the equipment etc. cleared out of there. Boxes over boxes piled up as we were working on this. Some other aspects like billing and reports had to be dealt with too and that was what has been occupying us over the past few days. In the picture you see our very hard working Food & Beverage hotel staff who supported us so vigorously over the past few weeks.

Tuesday night then the company invited for a huge staff party for the more than 200 management staff and 700 hosts and hostesses. It took place in Cheng Pu Gardens, a beautiful Imperial Garden in the center of Beijing. It was a great time to exchange experiences with fellow management staff of whom many I had not seen throughout the Games. Good food, dancing, and an entertaining slideshow presenting pictures from staff during Games time made for an entertaining evening. Here's just a couple snapshots from that night...

The night after, a group of us went to have a delicious Beijing Duck Dinner - how yummy that was! I can only recommend!

Since then now, my preparation has been on taking care of final issues here, returning my company laptop and phone and preparing my trip back home. A final shopping trip to the silk market did not provide me with the hoped opportunity to film the 'different' sales strategies in China - I was stunned. The sales personnel acted completely different. They were not aggressive at all anymore in comparison to my original visit nearly two months ago...it was so weird. I had heard about the Olympic rules distributed to the people of Beijing in the media and certainly experienced changes in the whole city, but not to this magnitude - the sales staff at silk market clearly follows the Olympic rules and regulations!

I have spent hours organizing my luggage over the past couple days. The amount of stuff you accumulate during such a stay and job at Olympic Games is just unbelievable. I finally decided to ship a box of items back to the States as I found out that the luggage restrictions to Europe are tremendous and overweight is very expensive. The trip to the post office this morning was an adventure in itself again, but thankfully the hotel staff was very supportive and helpful.

I have to admit though: As exciting and interesting this trip and job was, I am ready to go back home! I have had to continually pray for patience and humility in dealing with the language barrier, mentality aspects and general challenges in terms of procedures in this country over the past week as the end has drawn closer. Most if not all my fellow independent contractors appear to be in a very similar state of mind. For me, the lack of spiritual support and nurturing in terms of fellowship or community has been a big factor in all this I believe and is starting to show. Thankfully, God and only him, has kept me above waters all this time, but I so look forward to returning to my routine and stability.

The semester back home has already begun Monday and I hope it is going well! I'll return back on the weekend and look forward to seeing you back in the office and classroom on Tuesday!

August 24 - The flame is extinguished: Beijing says good-bye to the world

2008-08-25T05:46:00.001-07:00

Then it was time for the day of the closing ceremony! Our original plan had us stay on the Olympic Green the whole day and cruising from the Volkswagen showcase to the handball final to the closing ceremony.

Yet, those plans had to be changed continuously as BOCOG (Beijing Organizing Committee of the Olympic Games) changed its policies and rules again and again. Just like the Opening Ceremony, the Closing ceremony promised to be a challenge in itself again. Due to the issues we faced during Opening our focus was on avoiding any potential pitfalls and risks.

In the final schedule version, we had to cancel our attendance at the handball finals as all final attendees had to leave the Olympic Green before they could re-enter. Since the final was scheduled for mid-afternoon that would have put us into a critical time crunch and we decided to only go to the Green in the later afternoon, stay in the sponsor hospitality center for a couple hours and go to Opening Ceremony from there.

Parking was the next issue. As you might recall from my Opening Ceremony descriptions we had to park at the infamous P17 South of the Olympic Green...well, while we were guaranteed to be able to drop right by the hospitality center in the afternoon we were scheduled to park down at this parking spot again and thus scheduled to walk our guests there after Closing.

Since we encountered many road blockages during our last walk there during Opening Ceremony we were going to have our hostesses test this walk beforehand to make sure there were no delays of any kind. Yet, two hours before leaving we got the good news that we could actually park right by the hospitality center which took a lot of concern off of our mind!

It was too perfect to be trueAfter our bus driver gave us a little scare by missing the right turn (which he had done correctly about 30 times before) and getting lost for a while, we made it to the Hospitality Center on time and then arrived at the stadium in time for the closing ceremony. Enjoy the picture show...

The ceremony is about to begin...

Powerful fireworks start off the show ...

Engaging the spectators...

Then, the flag bearers of all 204 participating countries enter the stadium followed by the athletes.

The medal ceremony for the last event of the Olympic Games, men's marathon is held in the stadium.

China's President and the President of the IOC declare the Games closed!

And the Olympic Flag is lowered...

It is now the moment of the future host city: London 2012 is rolling in by bus with David Beckham on board....

The focus is back on the flame. The sculpture in the middle of the stadium represents the Olympic flame. The top of the stadium presents pictures of the various competition days and events.

See how the light in the sculpture is on and the flame is lit - then the sculpture turns dark and the flame is extinguished.

The flame comes alive...

and becomes a tree...

Yes, these are actual people!

To the beat of "Beijing, Beijing, I love you Beijing" - the city of Beijing says good-bye to the world!

The Olympic Lanes

2008-08-25T05:24:00.000-07:00

In the following you will see a few pictures taken here in Beijing to allow you a look at the 'famous' Olympic Lanes. As I had previously mentioned, the local Organizing Committee has set up so-called Olympic lanes all across the city which are for use of official cars and buses only. If you drive on this lane without permit the penalty is a tough one - rumors are that you even go to prison. The Olympic lane concept has proven truly beneficial just like it had during previous games. Cruising by traffic jams, Olympic transportation was flawless in that regard during these games.

Motivational slogans welcome you everywhere you look in all the different languages...

Despite these slogans and the flags and banners all around the city though, the Olympic spirit in Beijing has been lacking overall. This is not just my opinion but appears to be the feedback from many people working here and especially those who have worked on previous games. I am not sure if it was because of the size of this city or what the exact reason was. Perhaps I can put this better into words after I have been back home for a while and I have stepped back from it all a little.

All I can say at this point is that it's been very well organized Games, partly to the point of perfection. Yet, the Olympic Spirit was not very noticeable across the city as the Games went on...

August 21-23 - The final wave 4 guest program is on

2008-08-24T23:00:00.000-07:00

After our night at the hospital it was a true blessing that our next wave of guests did not come in the same day the the other guests were leaving, but a day later. This gave us a day to recover from the night without sleep. I used this day to take a test drive with our hostesses in the bus up to a different parking lot at the Aquatic Center. We were discussing to use this lot for the day we were going to attend the diving competition and potentially also for closing ceremonies. So, I went on the road with my hostesses to check out the drive and the walk ways.

Oh my goodness - I tell you - our bus drivers do not have any sense of direction. I used to be pretty bad with this at some point in the past, but I felt like in this case I had to 'hold his hand' driving. I had not been on this respective side of the Olympic Green very often in these past few weeks but I felt like I had a good sense of the directions and different places we needed to go. Of course there are always new road blockages and changes around the Games that you cannot anticipate and that delay things - that was why we did the test in the first place - yet, this driver though who is originally from Beijing had absolutely no idea what he was doing and where he was going. Again, he had no sense of direction. For about two hours we were driving in circles since on top of his confusion he did not trust any instructions given to him.

This is just one example of the repeated tests for patience that we certainly encountered in these weeks here in China dealing with Chinese staff and partners, and the language barrier did not make it easier. Our hostesses' English is pretty good, yet the communication with the driver through them repeatedly proved difficult for our team and most of the other programs as well. This has been a good example of cross-cultural communication challenges right there.

In the end though we've always made it and figured out the ways and after this excursion we felt ready for the next group that arrived Friday. This was a bigger group of about 30 people. Right after their arrival and check-in they went straight to the Forbidden City, and the program continued from there.

They were able to attend athletics, diving, soccer and the closing ceremony during their short stay in Beijing, and their agenda further included some sightseeing stops and meeting workshops. The following pictures will give you some impression their program. The first pictures show the aquatic center for diving. You can see the bubbles at the ceiling that characterize the 'water cube' from the outside.

Then, the soccer final between Argentina and Nigeria - Argentina wins the gold!

The guests were thrilled with their experience as they shared. For many of them it was the first time in Beijing and China overall, and for many also the first Olympic Games experience. For me, another highlight of these days was my encounter with the representative of Canada's top Olympic sponsor Bell Canada and two Canadian top athletes outside our hospitality suite one evening - I forgot their names, but she is the speed skating Olympic Champion and Mountain biking bronze medalist (both summer and winter Games!!!) and he is the aerial skiing world champion!

August 19-21 - Emergency challenge

2008-08-20T21:33:00.000-07:00

Over the past couple days we've received some involuntary practice in emergency response. Tuesday night, one of my two main client representatives had a medical emergency and needed to go to the hospital.

I received a call from her partner, the second client representative at about 2:20 am stating his colleague experienced some kind of allergic reaction and needed to see a doctor. After a couple quick calls I was able to locate a private doctor our sister program had on board. He was readily available five minutes later and we walked over to her room. He gave her response medicine but quickly stated that she had to go to the hospital by ambulance and be monitored there for a while.

Calling the ambulance in itself was an interesting experience, since it took the Chinese hotel staff ages to understand the urgency of the situation. We were wondering repeatedly how they would have managed if this was a truly life-threatening situation. She was transported in an ambulance with the doctor by her side and I followed in a taxi after them. My fellow program manager meanwhile stayed at the hotel to bring the guests to the airport in the morning as they were to depart on Wednesday early morning.

The Volkswagen Doctor was a true blessing, since he not only treated her promptly, but also recommended a very good hospital. It was even nicer than any of the ones I had been to in Germany or the US! If you ever need it when visiting Beijing - I pray you don't - go to United Family Hospital! It is a private hospital with mostly international patients and famous Chinese people or high officials visiting. Upon arrival, the company doctor immediately discussed the case with the hospital doctor, who was American, from Chicago.

They decided to give her additional medicine while I was trying to calm her down in this uncomfortable and scary situation. The medicine at first sped up her heart beat to the that she started to panic, but calmed down shortly after and later on, the medicine put her to sleep. That was a big relieve. The doctor said that her condition could have easily been life threatening as not just her eyes but also her throat were swelling up as a result of her condition and that it was good that we reacted quickly. He also stated that she would probably fine and ready to leave the hospital a few hours later.

He was an interesting doctor. Just a couple weeks earlier he was assigned to President Bush when he came to Beijing for the Opening Ceremony. He shared a couple of interesting anecdotes about his short-term assignment including the story surrounding a small injury one of Bush's bodyguards sustained mountain biking.

I waited there at the hospital until they moved her to the IV to monitor her for a few more hours. In the meantime, I left to take care of things at the hotel and for the program, and when she had indeed recovered later in the afternoon to the point that she could leave the hospital, we went and picked her up. Her eyes still showed tremendous swelling, but otherwise she was fine. And, in German manner, she went right to the hospitality suite to do some computer work...oh man...I could not believe it! We could not convince her to just stay and rest.

What else had happened over these past couple days? Well, before our emergency, our program included another stop at the Volkswagen showcase and a visit of the National stadium for another night of world class athletics.

By this third visit of the showcase our shuttle to and from the showcase is finally operating without requiring me to give my Chinese contact ten calls ahead of time to confirm - we only need about five by now.... whatever it takes! I can say one thing: flexibility is not a Chinese strength. Yet, as you can see the clients enjoy it and don't see any of the struggles behind our efforts.

Afterwards, I dropped off my guests at athletics and quickly ran over to the Indoor stadium to watch some gymnastics. I only had my accreditation and no assigned seat, but was able to sneak into a good seating area with a whole crowd of people from the German ZDF television team. That made not only for a good view but also for good conversations. They were all there attending on their day off to watch the high bar final where German Fabian Hambuechen was a top favorite for the gold medal. Unfortunately, Germany's hope was not fulfilled that night, when Hambuechen had to settle for the bronze...but nonetheless it was an exciting competition and fun to watch.

Also, my quick visit to the gymnastics arena allowed me to witness Shawn Johnson's and Nastia Liukin's gold and silver medal in gymnastics on the balance beam and the following medal ceremony for the US girls.

Upon my return to the stadium, I arrived just in time for the medal ceremony for the men's 400 m hurdles and the playing of the US national anthem. Three American runners were in the medal ranks in this contest. You'll see additional pictures from other events that night including women's 400m (3. Sanya Richards - USA - and 1. Christine Ohuruogu - GB) final, 100m hurdles final, and men's high jump (1. Andrey Silnov, Russia; 2. Germaine Mason - GB; 3. Yaroslav Ribakov, Russia). Enjoy the pictures!

August 18/19 - Meeting interesting people from all over

2008-08-18T21:14:00.000-07:00

Here's a few more pictures from the basketball game US versus Greece the other night...I had access to my friend's 'personal photographer' that night and did not need to worry about taking many pics myself ... He just now sent me his pics - thank you Snow! So, enjoy some more good snapshots of our basketball "creme de la creme"!

I found out how to get in touch with my student, the 100 m bronze medalist! I will use the day after tomorrow when this next guest group has left and the other one has not yet arrived to drop him a congratulatory note at the USA house.

Meanwhile, I am keeping you in prayer as many of you who are reading this are preparing for Tropical Storm Fay. I pray for your safety and God's protection - please keep me posted - haven't heard from any of you out there in a couple days, so please drop me a quick line on how things are going. Let me know how my condo is doing too :)

Talking about Florida, I have been very happy to hear that I will get to see my family for a few more hours on my one-night layover in Frankfurt during my return trip. They will all come up to my sister's place and we get to spend one evening together before I leave for back home. That is awesome since it will be quite a long time before I get to see most of them again. I will fly to Germany on the 29th and back to Miami on the 30th .... I must admit that while I am enjoying my time here and the experience overall very much, I am so looking forward to coming back to Florida! It's been a long time of traveling and as nice as the hotels are, I can't wait to sleep in my own bed again!

Otherwise, things are going very smoothly here. The job has stayed interesting and I've been continuously meeting people from all different backgrounds around my work. One of our guests for example is professor at Cambridge University and owns various media companies. We've had some very fascinating exchanges. All the guests have remarkable backgrounds and are very interested in learning about mine as it is quite unusual.

Also, yesterday for example, VW/Audi representatives based in the Middle East, in countries like Syria, Jordan, and Dubai, kept approaching me and we engaged in interesting conversations in regards to their business, but also politics and religion. Then, one of our well-known Sport TV commentators in Germany - my German friends know him very well: Joerg Wontorra - listened in on one of my conversations and later on approached me and we were sharing about the 'infectious disease of the Olympic Games" so many of us working here have caught. These are his 7th Olympic Games, my third. It is funny....moving from Games to Games, you truly see so many of the same faces. As tough as the job is sometimes, there is something about the Games that has people returning every two years. The most inspiring aspect for me remains to meet people from all over the world and to connect with them in some way and perhaps have an influence in one way or another, hopefully positively. The Games provide for an opportunity to do so.

While talking, Wontorra was quick to point out how much my language shows where my home is now "Miss US-Germany speaks better English than German" he stated with a smile ... oh, oh, I guess I have to go back to my German group meetings in West Palm to practice my high German lol.

Tonight, we are off to another evening of athletics and a lot of finals are scheduled. Should be exciting - I'll wave into the camera if I get the chance :)

August 14-17 - My former student wins the bronze!

2008-08-17T20:36:00.000-07:00

In the meantime, the second guest group has come and gone and third guest group has arrived. These are small groups and thus they receive special VIP treatment with all of our team focusing on their well-being.

Hence, the second group – and I’m quoting them – “had a blast” and were hugging us at the airport, something Germans only do if they really mean it. This is a definite cultural difference to the US or other areas of the world. Germans usually keep their distance and don’t hug easily. Hence, them giving us this hug to say good-bye was a very good sign J

The third group that is here now seems very relaxed too and they seem to be enjoying the access to Olympic events and participating in our events and activities big-time. As I mentioned before, at a group their size they get very special treatment from us.

Our group has had two big nights of athletics recently. Two nights ago, the 100 m race was the highlight, and in this race – which we call the “Koenigsdisziplin” in Germany - one of my former FSU students took the Bronze: Walter Dix.

He was my student when I was teaching in my final year as a Ph.D. at Florida State and it was great that I was in the stadium for all his races, even the preliman. It was neat seeing him excel like that. Julie, you have to tell your brother! Weren't they going to school together?

Another funny thing was that right in front of me the cousin of the silver medalist, Richard Thompson, from Trinidad Tobego was sitting. Not only was he a cousin of Thompson, but he is also a student in Tallahassee – so he went completely crazy after the race. I will try to get in touch with Walter through the USOC. It would be fun to see him and to congratulate him in person…we’ll see if I can pull that one off while working.

But, what about Bolt? Was that amazing or what? Wow, he was so far ahead of the others….his celebration round was a lot of fun too.

Last night then three of his fellow Jamaicans won the gold, silver and bronze in the women’s final. One of our journalists was joking about the high number of medal winners for Jamaica in comparison to the country’s population size this morning saying that “every third person in Jamaica must have won a medal by now”.

Before these big nights of athletics our group had gone back again to see basketball. My friend Scot from Visa got me special seating only a few rows behind Kobe and his team and it was awesome. Watching basketball without the constant commercial breaks and interruptions is a true treat. I have seen many NBA games, but to see these NBA stars all on one court, to see them this focused and energized, and with this flow of the game without all these game interruptions was very special. They played a great game against Greece, and they will be very tough to beat if they stay focused. The leadership of Kobe Bryant on and off the court has been very apparent in this tournament.

One of the mornings, we went back to Beach Volleyball and we were witnessing both an American team and a German team win, so it was a very successful day for me! In the next round they will play each other now – I guess I will win either way ;-).

I have also had a couple nights off work this past few days as I had been on the morning shift. Usually, I accompanied the group anyway at night to just make sure things were going ok, but one night I actually went to the German house. It is located in the Kempinski Hotel and is set up very nicely, especially the outside area. It was a good evening of networking. I also got to meet Michael Gross, the former swimming gold medalist, one of the big stars in swimming in Germany in the 80’s. Further, I spent a lot of time talking to the German national coach of swimming, which was very interesting as well. As so many coaches he also wondered in which sport I excelled – My response to him was that if I had moved to Florida earlier I might have become a good swimmer, but growing up in the Black Forest there was no way you would get me into that cold water lol. In the end, we agreed that I should look into bringing a swimming event to West Palm Beach J - that might be a good project for you and I my dear students!

My second night off then was last night. As I am changing to night shift today, this was my last opportunity to have some free time in the evenings. And, what did I do? Well, I was debating to go to one of the events, to the German house, American house or Heineken house. I was also planning to listen to my church service at home – but “es kommt alles anders als man denkt” – I slept more than 13 hours straight through. I fell asleep at 6 p.m. and got up at 7:30 a.m. this morning. I do not know the last time I went to bed at 6, man it must have been as a kid, but apparently it was needed.

This morning then, I have had the pleasure to ride in the hotel elevator with the founder of Panera Bread. Unfortunately, I only found out towards the end of our conversation who he was, when he asked me where I lived in the States and shared that he owns the Panera Bread there and ALL of them everywhere. You must know that I love Panera Bread – it was the place where I wrote most of my dissertation, and I have met many special people there. It has been the place for divine connections for me and so it was special to meet the actual founder.

In regards to people and personalities: Michael Phelps – the big star of these Games – is supposed to check in to our hotel today – I am not supposed to know and share this – but, oh well, you don’t know where I am staying right now so that is ok J.

I have to make it to the aquatics center tonight – I will drop off my crew at Athletics and then finally check out some swimming before returning to the stadium. I have not made it in there yet and our group is only going to see diving…

Before you go, a few more beautiful pictures of the Olympic Green at night. We have had a few beautiful days with no smog, low humidity and moderate heat. It's been awesome. Also, the Green is now full of people. With the beginning of the athletic events a few days ago and additional 100.000 Olympic Green day passes that were passed out to the public, the Green is much more so filled with the Olympic atmosphere you'd expect than it was before - makes the sponsors happy too...

August 13 - I speak Chinese!

2008-08-13T07:34:00.001-07:00

Well, saying "I speak Chinese" might be a bit exaggerated - just a little exaggerated :-) - but I finally manage to guide my taxi driver without getting the Chinese language directions from hotel staff! Hurra! Hurray! I can say "I know the way", "straight", "left", "right", and most importantly "stop" - lol. Finally, after about six weeks here I am starting to feel like I get a "feel" for the language and people actually appear to understand when I try to say something.

Usually, when I visit a country, I want to learn how to communicate, at least the essentials. Obviously, Chinese has been quite a bit more challenging than other languages, even than Greek four years ago. Whenever I tried to say something I have felt like I was mixing all the other language sounds together - it was awful. I feel a bit more comfortable now and start bubbling away as I do in other languages. It is about time! I only have a bit more than two weeks left, so it better come fast.

My favorite thing to do over the past few days has been to ask the taxi drivers for repeated explanations of how to say certain things. It appears to be a great way to relax them a bit and make them smile. They are way too serious around here, which is not surprising looking at the horrendous traffic. They can use somebody cheering them up a little and I try to do my best.

The language mix I am speaking (German, English, Chinese, and whenever I can I speak Italian or French to people from those countries I try to take the opportunity) appears to affect my speech quite a bit...I feel like I have a very strong German accent right now due to spending a lot of time with my family during the early part of my travels and now with all these German clients since then. At the same time, my clients made a funny remark the other day about my German accent. They said that you sometimes hear that I am from the South of Germany on the one hand , and that on the other hand it was apparent that I have spent quite a few years in the States - Great, I have a Black Forest/American accent now when I speak German! How weird is that?!?

So much about the language phenomenon! Man, I just love languages!

Other than that, there was nothing special going on today. Lots of work and now we are ready to welcome our guests early in the morning and offer them an awesome experience in Beijing!

Ohhhh, before I forget: one more thing, I ran across Glenn Close at our hotel today. I think she thought I was an athlete ... she looked at in that certain way. I was just smiling at her as I usually do smile at people and only realized who she was when passing her.

Everybody here thinks I am an athlete again. Just like in Athens, that's been a prevalent thing for people to ask me "Are you an athlete?". Today, they even asked me "So, are you part of the US team?" - see, and Jonathan, you called me a "traitor" yesterday buying and waving the American flag - they even think I am on your team, buddy! I live in the States. Germany is home-home, the US is home. I cheer for both!

August 9-12 - It flows ... smoothly

2008-08-12T03:14:00.000-07:00

Witnessing a win for the German team in Beach Volleyball the night after Opening turned the mood in our group around for good. The German team even had one match point against them, yet managed to turn the game around. As a result, the journalists were in a very cheerful mood and nothing disturbed that mood until their departure. We made sure to be prepared for all eventualities.

Other activities that day had been lifting their spirits tremendously before already. We were able to organize an original Chinese bike for a PR gig that one of our client's upper management members was planning. They were very happy with the outcome and appreciative of the short-notice effort. Later on, the whole guest team attended the Volkswagen Showcase on the Olympic Green, where Dr. Winterkorn, the VW Chairman, officially opened the impressive VW/Audi exhibition followed by an entertaining show.

As a short side note especially to my students: The sponsor showcasing has not been without issues here at these Olympic Games either. The Olympic Green is open to Olympic ticket holders only and thus people traffic is limited on the Green from the outset. Also, there are no security entrances for spectators anywhere near the sponsor showcasing areas, and specifically the Volkswagen showcasing. Furthermore, all the venues are in the opposite direction of the showcasing areas, so the sponsors are very concerned about the limited spectator and public traffic out there. Volkswagen was scheduled to meet with the IOC, BOCOG and other officials these days to address this issue. Apparently, BOCOG will hand out an additional 100.000 day passes to the Green to increase spectator traffic on the Green.

When the showcase opening had wrapped up, we were invited to take a look at the Johnson & Johnson showcasing, which is very nearby. Johnson & Johnson is an IOC TOP Sponsor and the head of the international sponsorship division gave us a private tour introducing the Johnson & Johnson organization and their products, as well as their corporate vision. It was very interesting. He explained the organization's link with the famous terracotta warriers of Xian for example - Johnson & Johnson had developed the means to keep the different parts found in good shape and get rid of mold threatening to destroy these ancient pieces. Among other things, they also provided an impression of their environmental consciousness in their business endeavors and decision shown over long periods of time.

The visit was interesting for a whole different reason too. Amidst our conversations I found out that Johnson & Johnson's sponsorship target group included employees as well, which is exactly my dissertation topic. Who knows, this might open the door to some interesting research opportunities in the future!

The following day, it was time for our guests to return back home. When they left the city we were all very happy and thankful for the trip ending on a very good note. For all of us on the team it had been long days and short nights since last week. After many days of only very little sleep and two nights with only one and two hours sleep respectively, I for sure needed to play some catch-up. Having the first wave of people leave and enjoying a short break in the program allowed me and my whole team to do so.

Sunday night I was so tired that I fell asleep listening to my home churches sermon online. I had totally forgotten what day of the week it was when I returned back to my hotel. When I realized it was Sunday, I tuned into our Christ Fellowship service live online. I even chatted with David, our online pastor during the early part of the service and he had the congregation greet me live over the camera which was so nice. I must admit though, I did not manage to stay awake for the sermon. I appologize David. I will have to listen to this "Olympic Sermon" later on! I will, the latest upon my return home.

For a couple days we have now been focusing on program revisions and adaptations, test drives to certain venues we had not visited with our first group, and other prep work. In a meeting with our clients we determined many aspects to consider for the next few waves of guests coming in and adapting the program schedules due to experiences during the first few days here.

I also had the chance to take a peak at certain sessions of a Yale management and business conference taking place across the hallway. Well-known first class scholars and top business man as well as IOC officials have been taking part in this special conference staged here around the Olympic Games. The main theme of the conference is the aspect of investing and establishing your business in the global market place and the challenges you will face around it. Very interesting, especially in context of the "cultural conflict" class I will be teaching this upcoming fall semester.

Returning to the hotel midday, I got to see the President of the Kongo at our Hotel. I spoke to several high state officials while they were waiting for him to come outside. One of them was the first counselor of economic and trade affairs for example. Of course, I only found this out after I had chatted with them for quite some time and they handed me their business cards ... well, if you need to know one thing about me: Birgit talks to everybody!

I assured the man with a smiling/winking face that he was the man I would contact if I want to start doing trade with the Kongo. I suggested starting fostering a relationship between the two countries in the area of international sport relations.

Later that evening, we went to see gymnastics. The women were determining their individual and team finalists and watching the young girls perform awakened some memories of my own gymnastic and gymnastic coaching days. On the walk back from the arena, trying to find a taxi, I enjoyed walking by the beautiful lighting of the Birdsnest and the Aquatic Centre.

Today then, we finished all our ticketing distribution, newsletters, departure notices, etc. and at night it was time for basketball. Several of our overall work team joined in on this rare night of free time. As you can see on the pics, we had fun. The US team beat Angola by a large margin as expected - a reason to wave our little US flags!

Tomorrow, it will be the day before our second group's arrival and things will become crazy again. Hence our theme for these days - Enjoy the peace while it lasts!

August 8 - Let the Games begin!

2008-08-11T21:12:00.000-07:00

Olympic Ceremonies, and especially Opening Ceremonies, are very special events and pose huge challenges for Organizing Committees and cities. The security challenges associated with an event of this magnitude and more than 80 heads of State visiting are tremendous and the Organizing Committee has kept changing rules and regulations over and over again.

To nobody’s surprise we still did not know in the morning of Friday, August 8, how many staff tickets we would receive and how many of our staff would be able to accompany and guide our guests and clients to the National Stadium. Without a ticket we were not even going to get onto the Olympic Green, the area surrounding the stadium. The accreditation was not going to let us get on at all.

It is quite hard to plan your procedures and itinerary when you don’t know whether you even have people that will be able to get in and do the job. It was not clear whether we would and we had to plan for the event that we would not be able to take anybody on-site. Well, later that morning the good news arrived: We had four tickets, so that Jonathan, Julie, Elicsia, and I were going to be guiding our guests during the afternoon events. What a relief!

After managing all program related events in the morning I quickly ran to the office to pick up our VAPP pass for parking for the Opening. Unfortunately, another short-notice change had us park in a lot that was a long way from the Olympic Stadium. The Organizing Committee kept making changes to the rules up until a few hours before the official start for security reasons. We left on time to allow our guests a couple of hours in the sponsor hospitality center just a few minutes from the stadium prior to the game and avoid potential parking issues. As I had mentioned earlier, only buses were allowed to even get close to the Olympic Green and we expected an endless number of buses and wanted to have some time just in case.

Well, when we arrived at our parking and wanted to walk to the stadium, the road was blocked with a military tank and we were informed that it would not open up. We were advised to take the subway. If you work in hospitality you know that taking the subway is usually not good news when you host media guests or VIPs, but what were we to do? We got in line and managed to get through the security mag and bag fairly quickly. Yet, in the humidity and heat of Beijing it was eternity for our clients. Also, since this was a regular spectator entrance and the volunteers were not trained for these kinds of events, they unfortunately would not let us keep our sponsor signs which are usually a big help guiding our guests in huge crowds of people. Well, after the long security check procedures, the subway ride and a quite long walk from the subway to the Olympic Hospitality Center, we had another little issue entering the hospitality area with the tickets. We finally made it to the Volkswagen tent and the guests could relax a little from their wild adventure. As you can imagine, our team was exhausted and we were partly wondering what else could possibly go wrong. It was especially difficult for our young Chinese hosts, who did not understand the world anymore it seemed like. We had to comfort them and cheer them up quite a bit to not show their frustration to the client.

At about 6 pm then it was time to go to the stadium and, thank God, here everything went smoothly. We experienced an awesome show. It was an amazing ceremony, unbelievable. It was very beautiful and truly impressive. It was for sure the best show I have ever seen, just amazing. Perhaps you have seen the show on TV, if you have not, try to get a tape, a DVD. In the show, China presented its history to the world and the performers did this with enormous precision, skill and elegance. The following pictures will give you some impression of the beauty of the show. They speak for themselves. Enjoy!

The countdown is on - the ceremony is about to begin...

Here we go! What a start!

The performers showed incredible precision and elegance...

Can you see all the faces? And recognize the swimmer on the right?

One world, one dream ... and then it was time for the athletes to take stage...

Number 139 was the US! Here they come...

Looking at me, you will only get an impression of how HOT it was in this stadium. It was unbelievably hot!

We were about to get a heat stroke upstairs and made our way downstairs through the beautifully illuminated stairs to where our clients were sitting...just in time for the German team to walk in. Number 196! I liked it that they did not let the nations walk in by alphabetical order like they used to. That made it more interesting.

You don't see it, but the German team is coming up right behind me...

Dirk Nowitzki was leading the team into the stadium...

Then, it was the host China and of course Yao Ming and his team received a stunning welcome!

After IOC President Jacques Rogge and Chinese President Hu Jintao declared the Olympic Games open, the Olympic flag was being carried into the stadium and the Olympic Hymne was played.

The stage was prepared for the flame to come into the stadium and it was lit by Li Ning, triple Olympic gold medalist gymnast.

Tremendous fireworks followed the ceremony!

While the show was absolutely wonderful, the travels back turned out to be even worse than the travels there. Walking down towards the parking lot, another road was blocked and we had to walk for close to one hour, which of course our guests were not thrilled about. This whole transportation disaster which happened to many groups just showed how tremendously big the Olympic Games have become and I often wondered throughout how much further it can still go. Our clients were very unhappy with the situation and there was nothing that we could do about it, absolutely nothing. I cannot tell you how happy I was when we finally had the group back in the hotel. My fellow program manager repeatedly just wanted to sink in the ground and disappear and we were by far not the only groups this happened to. Many other groups, including top sponsors experienced similar issues. Oh man.

I had an emergency meeting with the client about these aspects and then with my senior program manager in how we were to address these issues that very same night at about 2 a.m.. Most of it what occurred was beyond us and is up to the client and our company management to resolve, but we of course vowed to do everything in our power to offer the clients a flawless last couple days. And, so we did. With a 120 percent effort of our entire crew, the next couple days went smoothly and we pampered our guests as much as possible to make up for the inconveniences that had occurred. Thankfully, we had no more issues of any such kind.

It is hard to understand for the client who pays a lot of money, that ceremonies are a challenge of a different kind. As for myself, I would say that the whole experience was good training for crisis management!

August 4-8 - Final preparations

2008-08-11T20:41:00.000-07:00

A lot has been going on over the past few days and in short: we are ready! Final preparations for the arrival of our clients and their guests have obviously been the focus of these couple days and here we are: Our guests have arrived and the 2008 Olympic Games will open tonight!

The hospitality suite – our and our guests’ “home” of the next couple weeks - was set up this week and in the picture you see the progress over the last three days. While it was filled with way too much furniture and tons of boxes on the first day, we re-arranged the suite several times to get to the final set up, which is visible on the pictures as well. Our hosts spent a lot of time preparing the guest gifts and filling their VW/Audi backpacks, as well as running errands for us where their Chinese language skills are of utmost advantage. Me and Jonathan meanwhile worked on assuring the overall operation of the program was all set. Also, since our clients’ arrival on Wednesday, a lot of coordination work has been needed. Among other things I took care of putting together an overview of the clients’ seating allocations for all events and preparing everything to be ready for the daily ticket distribution – an important aspect of the program. I further finished writing and editing a daily newsletter for the client with important information on the Olympic Games in general and specifically for Beijing, some local information about Beijing and China, and other information important to the client guests. Final printouts of all materials were made and the morning of the guests’ day of arrival we inspected their rooms and delivered their gifts to be waiting for them upon their arrival.

On one of our late evenings during this time of final preparation I was working in our office in the Ritz Carlton (next two pictures) when a group of hosts and hostesses from our sister VW program arrived back from an airport training. They were all excited and in total awe – you could not get them to quiet down. The reason? No, it was not the airport – they had just met Jackie Chen in the lobby. One of the girls – her name is Mini and she truly is Mini, a tiny Chinese lady – was about to faint as a result of all the excitement. It was so funny.

Me and a fellow co-worker had an excitement of a different kind the next morning: Like we do every morning, we took a taxi to the hotel. On the way, my friend needed to pick up her laundry quickly. Therefore, we asked the taxi driver to stop shortly at the laundry place. She left the car and I stayed in the car waiting for her. The taxi driver seemed very unhappy with this and wanted to go back on the road. In my very limited Chinese I told him to not leave but to wait. He kept looking angrily at the time and again, wanted to start driving away. I could not communicate to him that he did not need to worry and that we would give him some extra money, so I decided to clearly communicate to him to stop and just wanted to get out of the taxi to wait for my friend. But there was no way. He gra

bbed my friends bag and was SO angry – wow. He would not let go of the bag and let me get out until my friend came back and helped me. We gave him his money and finally got out. He was so full of anger, it was unbelieveable. Unfortunately, the language barrier did not allow communicating this and ministering to him….it was indeed quite exciting! My friend needed some time to calm down. I rather regretted not being able to communicate to this guy in a godly way that there was nothing to get angry or upset about at all. Oh well, this was a cultural experience of a different kind.

Thursday morning then I went out to the airport ve

ry early in the morning to get one guest that arrived early. For all my German friends: She arrived on the same flight as Franziska van Almsick, a former German Olympic Swim Champion, who is working in Beijing as a commentator for German TV. The funny thing was that a girl I knew – a friend of Nina who went with me to Inner Mongolia – actually picked her up at the airport as she is working for German TV. We saw each other and she said “What are you doing here?” Another event showing what a small world we live in.

Overall, the airport was still very quiet in the morning of this big travel day. One this day before the big open

ing ceremony a record number of travelers were expected to arrive in Beijing. And, just as expected, the quietness of the morning did not last. When I returned to the airport later on that day with my two hostesses it was unbelievably busy. I do not think I have ever seen this many people at one spot. We were expecting a group of 25 people from Seoul and their flight was delayed. I do not know if any pictures can communicate the masses of people appropriately. The amount of flights coming in virtually at

the same time seemed endless. At the same time, masses of people crowded the arrival hall to pick up the arriving guests. Sign after sign, an ocean of signs, were covering the arrival area. I was kind of worried that in this sea of sign our guests would not necessarily see ours – but there is nothing you can do than try to make yourself visible best you can. I placed my two hostesses as visibly as I could and we all kept roaming around. I also kept asking people coming out which flights they had been on to get an idea of when they might actually be coming through. We knew that it would take them at least half an hour to get through customs and immigration The list of flights went on and on from Chicago, Singapoor, to Hongkong, un

til a flight crew arriving finally said “Seoul”. This was us!

Only a few minutes later, one of our guests made his way through and person by person, we gathered all of them. Part of the group had snuck in the Olympic lane entry which is usually open to accredited people only, but fortunately we found them fairly soon and were able to gather the whole group quite easily. The walk to the bus went fairly smoothly as well and the bus driver was waiting for us already.

There though we ran into a challenge. The bus had some items stored in the luggage area, which we were not aware of as we had only received the bus right before our departure to the airport. Also, our German guests brought a lot of luggage. Consequently, the luggage area was filled up with a lot of suitcases still standing on the ramp. 25 concerned and questioning faces were looking at me while I was praying and trying to determine a way to resolve this issue. And, there he was. Literally right this moment, George, a member of our airport transportation team appeared on the scene: I looked at him, shortly explained the situation and plainly said: “We need an additional van for these guests’ luggage”. After giving it a short thought, he responded right away saying that it was ok for us to take a van standing right there in the loading zone. Man, what a relief that was. Thank you Lord. After calming down fears in passengers that their luggage would not arrive with them by assuring that our host traveling on the van would oversee the direct transfer to our hotel right behind us, we loaded the luggage on there and seated the bus.

As we were leaving the parking spot, the van did not move though. While my guests became concerned again I asked my host to call our other host who stayed with the luggage to reiterate to follow us only to learn that the van would not start. Are you kidding me? I could not believe it when I heard it. While I was trying to find a resolution for this problem, I had to calm down people’s concern about their luggage without them even knowing that the van did not start. I called Jonathan and asked him to coordinate a new van with the transportation team as I did not want to create more concern among the passengers. Ultimately, they got the van to start about ten minutes later. Oh man, what a challenging beginning to this whole program. Ultimately, we arrived safely at the hotel and the van with the luggage followed only a short time later.

The remainder of the day went smoothly and so did the morning of the following day. All travels and events ran without interruptions. And, now it was here, Opening day!

August 3/4 - Testrun to the airport

2008-08-04T09:55:00.001-07:00

Yesterday, I went to church! It was my first live church service in about two months and it did me a lot of good – while I’ve been enjoying following my home church online, it still is a different story in person and it was much-needed spiritual food for me. I want to take the opportunity to thank all of you who have been praying for me - as I have been away from my normal environment your prayer support has certainly given me a lot of strength and upheld me during these travels. Thanks especially to you Shiela, what would I do without you fellow soldier :)

The church I attended was a church I was referred to by a group of young missionaries I had met a couple weeks earlier. Michael, one of them, invited me to the service and so I took his offer at this probably last opportunity before the crazyness of the Games takes over completely. The church is located on the second floor of a hotel about 15 minutes from where I am staying right now. Its website indicated that the Chinese government does not allow Chinese nationals to attend and, indeed, I had to show my passport upon entry. This is another indication that things are often still not how they appear to be at the surface here in China and Beijing.

The church has an American pastor and people attending were mostly from the US too I would suggest. I cannot say for sure, as I did not get the chance to speak to the pastor or anybody else except for Michael. Unfortunately, I had arrived a little bit late due to repeated taxi driver challenges, and had to leave a little bit early as my work was calling! The message though could not have been more fitting. The pastor compared the Christian walk to that of an athlete and interestingly enough, my home church in West Palm had the exact same message on this day - a very encouraging message and very fitting for my circumstances at this point and time, in all respects. Also, it gave me yet another cultural experience of a different kind here in Beijing.

The early afternoon I spent working in our office that we now have set up in the Ritz Carlton Central - finally we have an office where we can print and copy! Yippea! We then joined in a meeting at 3 p.m. for a final question and answer session for all management staff clarifying final outstanding issues in the area of transportation, ticketing, food & beverage, Olympic Hospitality Center, Opening Ceremony, and others. Afterwards, we received more program items as well as a nice big duffle bag for us to take home. Thank you - I hope it will fit all my extra stuff that I will need to bring home!

Today now, I took care of a lot of administrative tasks including developing and printing out program information, welcome letters to all guests, contact lists, luggage tags, etc. etc. I was taking care of the important small parts of event and program management jobs - my students know what this means :). I also introduced Sisi, our hospitality staff to her job and instructed her on certain tasks and responsibilities she will have, while Jonathan, my fellow program manager went program shopping at a Chinese Walmart with the other two - yes, they have Walmart here too!

Afterwards Jonathan and I surprised the three ladies and took them out to lunch at one of our Dine around restaurants. It was the first Thai food they ate in their entire life! Using one of our sister program's van drivers (we will get our bus drivers on Thursday only), we practiced the communication of our hostesses with the drivers and their coordination skills which was also a good practice for the drivers.

I took the staff out to the airport afterwards, where we determined where our guests will arrive and where we are to pick them up. We also clarified how to walk them back and discussed all the boarding details. These programs have to run very smoothly and there may be no issues or delays in any of these program steps, so it is important to very properly train the staff in all these areas to avoid any problems. Our ladies seem to be comfortable about the airport procedures now. Also, on our first guest cycle I will accompany them either way, as most of our clients speak German.

When we toured the airport, the Olympic spirit was apparent wherever you looked. Many media representatives and other accredited personnel and officials are filling the arrival halls at Beijing International airport these days and it will get more. The US swim team was just arriving when we were there today. Athletes and other official representatives are exiting in a lane especially marked for them out of baggage claim. Unfortunately, I did not have my camera with me to document this.

On our way back, we had to let a whole convoy of Audi vehicles pass by on the Olympic Lane. The center car of the convoy was seating a female - I would suggest a government representative or royalty from a middle Eastern country. Many security personnel were following the car. I could not see the entire flag on the car, but due to the green base color I suspected Saudi Arabia...convoys like this will be seen very frequently over the next few days around Beijing.

For your explanation: The Olympic Lane is a lane that is reserved for Olympic vehicles only. Olympic Lanes are established on selected streets, the main streets and expressways throughout the city and to the main Olympic venues, to improve traffic and avoid transportation issues for everybody involved in the Olympic Games, including athletes, officials, media, sponsors and the workforce. Anybody using the Olympic Lane without the proper right and identification signage apparently pays a horrendous fee here in Beijing. I have even heard about jail time yet cannot confirm this.

Transportation is a huge concern at Olympic Games and probably the most crucial aspect. There have been many concerns about transportation at the Beijing Olympic Games, so it will be very interesting on how this plays out. The Olympic Lanes out to the airport worked very well today and we made it to the airport in record time. We will see if this stays this way - the opening ceremony will be a huge test!

August 1/2 - More training and program prep

2008-08-04T09:54:00.001-07:00

It is August! Opening Day is getting close! We were all called to another long day with a new day of training for management staff and on-site staff together: The JW Marriott Ballroom was filled with more than 900 people! As you can imagine it was quite crazy and it lasted 14 hours! We covered important and essential information, but needless to say that by the end of it all, we all could hold no more information.

While most of our Chinese hosts and hostesses speak decent English, the language barrier still proved challenging in this day. It was at its peak when a Greek full-time staff held a lengthy transportation presentation on all venues and all the Chinese staff admitted about half-way through that they could not understand a word he said - It proved to be an interesting communication challenge of a different kind. Language and cultural differences appeared very clear in this situation... Thankfully, a translator was on hand immediately to correct the situation and you would not believe how thankful the Chinese staff were for that. The translator received a standing ovation lasting at least a couple minutes. It was amazing to see - all of us native speakers or at least fluent speakers did not realize how much our Chinese staff had been struggling all along to understand staff who had a strong foreign language accent themselves.

The Chinese staff showed similar excitement when they heard that they had not yet received their full per diem payment yet and a sigh of relief and jubilation went through the huge ballroom. Another interesting situation came up after executive management stressed the importance of staff arriving at work 15 minutes early. One of the hosts asked whether he would get more points for being on time in comparison to others who don't come to work on time. the reason for his question was the fact that during their academy training they had received points for punctuality. It had to be explained to this student that he had graduated and that there are no more points to be earned, but that it is part of his job to be on time.

These were moments that stuck to my memory as they very much spoke volumes about cultural differences and challenges that are difficult to completely avoid, even by holding a one-year intensive academy program. Their reaction to the benefits they will receive though showed their thankfulness for the opportunity they are given by working these Olympic Games. For these young adults this is the opportunity of a lifetime, not only to earn some extra money. For them graduating from the academy and working these Games is an excellent step towards a promising future, an opportunity that is not very common for the average Chinese.

During the meeting, it was also interesting to hear about some of the organizational issues our company is dealing with in terms of handling local university policies for the students. Students partly live in circumstances that are hard to imagine for students in western countries. Students usually only have hot water during certain times of the day, and they have no power during certain times of the day. They also close at a certain time. This poses a challenge during Games time, when many students work or volunteer for the Olympic Games. Students will have 20-hour days and will need to be able to take a shower when they get back home, they need to be able to charge their cell phones over night and they need to get back into their dorms when they return after 1 a.m. in the morning. Our management vowed to resolve these issues and talk to the university administrations involved. Examples for some of the smaller but never the less important challenges facing an organization involved in the Olympic Games.

Executive management shared important information about BOCOG (Beijing Organizing Committee of the Olympic Games) policies that are difficult to come by. Among others, we found out about their policy for Opening Ceremony saying that only people holding a ticket will be allowed on the Olympic Green. No matter what type of accreditation you have, if you have no ticket, you will not even be allowed to enter the Olympic Park area. This is part of BOCOG's rigorous security regulations. While Athens applied similar rules in terms of Olympic Stadium access to its opening ceremony, you could get onto the Olympic domain at least with your credential at the time, yet also only enter the stadium either with a ticket or a special sticker on your credential. BOCOG's policy poses a challenge for companies like ours because hosts and hostesses without ticket will not be able to guide guests to the stadium and to their seats.

Also, for opening ceremony, only buses will be allowed to even get close to the Olympic Green and only those that have the corresponding vehicle identification. No cars or vans are allowed at all and our company alone will run 90 buses to the National Stadium that afternoon. Special transportation rules are set up for this day only. How serious BOCOG takes this rule is shown by the following fact: Only eight out of 90 heads of State attending the Opening Ceremony will be allowed to use private transportation. One of our executive managers gave us the quiz to state which eight heads of State those are, but did not give us the answer - so you can guess with us! Once I find out, I will share it on this blog.

Our group's suggestions were the heads of state of the following countries: China, USA, Great Britain, France, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and .... I forget the last one .... oh man, I will have to share later. Stay tuned to find out whether we were right on target or not... I will try to get the answer for you!

Another interesting fact about these Olympic Games: 32.000 journalists are covering the Games and 27.000 of those are accredited. With 10.000 athletes participating these 2008 games have a ratio of 3:1 - three journalists to cover one athlete! Again, the Games have grown even bigger than the 2004 Games.

After this long day of training, it was time for a group picture for the more than 900 staff at the Temple of Heaven bright and early at 8 a.m. the next day. Bright blue skies welcomed us as we made our way down there. And, arriving at the Temple of Heaven gardens, it was - as we say in German - an ocean of people dressed in red and a smaller ocean of people dressed in blue moving through the beautiful gardens. We witnessed many Chinese practicing Thai Chi and exercising while walking through the park. This is a strong tradition in China and if you visit parks early in the morning, you will see them engaging in these activities very passionately.

Our group picture was then taken in front of the Temple of Heaven, on the steps leading up to it. Understandably, it proved challenging to position everybody in a way to fit all 900 on one picture, but we made it. Counting to three, the instruction was to close our eyes on one and open them at three – let’s hope it worked! When I receive a copy of the picture, I will put it on the blog as well. Thankfully, the more than 700 bus drivers had their picture taken a day earlier. Their would have been no way to fit all 1500 staff in one.

Following the staff picture, I went on another venue bus tour with our staff. The bus specifically focused on showing us all bus stops for all the venues all around the city and outlined to us the walkways we will have to take when we are with our clients. It was the first bus tour for our Chinese staff and thus very important. It was also a good time to get to know them better and grow closer as a team. They are very sweet and very smart! We are a good team!

July 30/31 - The Olympic Green

2008-08-04T08:27:00.001-07:00

It was fortunate that I was eating some awesome German food on the night before a very tiring tour of the Olympic Green the next day. Me, and a couple other fellow independent contractors went for a nice dinner at a German restaurant in the Kempinski Hotel on Tuesday evening – and the Schnitzel was so yummie! The Kempinski hotel or rather, a specific area of the Kempinski hotel, will serve as the German house during the Olympic Games where the German National Olympic Committee will welcome and honor German medal winners and hold receptions for athletes as well as prominent figures in politics, culture, and entertainment. Every country has a house of its own at the Olympics where they host officials and athletes during the Olympic Games.

So, the next day, me and the team, we were all off to walk the giant Olympic park called “Olympic Green”. The ways are indeed LONG on the Green and the venue tour was quite a walking exercise! Oh man, the Olympic visitors, spectators and guests have to show athletic skills themselves to even just get into the Olympic Park and even more so getting from venue to venue. I joked with our girls that by the end of the Games they would be able to compete in the Olympic walking competition.

The Olympic Park is not open to the public, so even now, a week before the Games, only people with accreditation may enter this huge area. The Olympic Green covers an area of 1135 hectar and is home to seven venues including the famous “Birdsnest”, the National Stadium seating 90.000 people and the big blue “Water cube”, the Aquatics Center. Overall, 13 different events will be held at the Green. To enter this huge Olympic Park in the North of Beijing, you have to show either your accreditation or, once the Games start, your event ticket.

We decided to enter the Green by subway on this day. Switching from Line 10 to Line 8, which is leading exactly into the Olympic Green, you have to go through the famously tough Olympic security controls, which we call “Mag & Bag” in Olympic Lingo. It might not sound like a big deal, yet it takes quite some time, and again some walking. Arriving at this transfer station, you first have to get out of the subway station, walk around 500 meters, pass the security controls and walk underground to board the train again. The awesome thing is, the subway is COMPLETELY new. This line had just opened a couple weeks earlier and when we were riding it that day it was still fairly empty. As we took the subway to the stop in the Green that is farthest north and that is located at the South end of Forest Park, we did not have much company at all and it was super clean. The picture might give you an idea. We were enjoying it while it lasted. Imagine how it will be ten days from now!

Getting off at this northern point we walked down South past the huge Olympic Store, a huge McDonalds, and all of the sponsor showcase buildings, which I photographed for the marketing and promotions class - yes, my students, you will get a first-hand look at this :). The pictures just show a couple examples ... CNPC for example is presenting itself with a Green Pavillon representing these "Green Olympics" - Isn't it funny how the maintenance guys are cutting the grass at the walls?

We then took a very detailed tour of all the venues relevant to our client group. Starting at the fencing hall, we continued our walk to the national indoor stadium for handball, the aquatics center for swimming and diving, and then to the national stadium where the opening and closing ceremonies as well as all track and field events and the football final are held. The venues are truly impressive as is one of only a few seven-star hotels in the world, the Pengu Plaza. It rains mightily behind the aquatic centre as you can see in the enclosed pictures. Huge TV screens, one of them seven stories high, show Olympic images and footage material.

Last but not least, we introduced our staff to the Olympic Hospitality Center (OHC), where sponsors and partners will welcome and host their respective guests. Most guests will spend some time in this area before and/or after they attend an event at the Green.

All in all, the main focus of the trip was to outline the exact walking paths to staff and make sure they know the fastest way to bring the guests to their destination the quickest and easiest way possible. Our Chinese staff meanwhile provided us with very interesting information about the Green and the venues that we would not have known if they did not share.

We kept hearing this song during our walk for example and I knew that I had heard it before…and I was right! Sisi shared that it is called "Jasmine" in English and that it was sung by a little Chinese girl at the Athens 2004 closing ceremony to express Beijing's Olympic theme welcoming the world to Beijing and to China. I remembered as she was telling me! Then, we passed thousands of young Chinese waiting for their practice run of the Opening ceremonies outside the Olympic stadium . They were pushing a kind of gold container holding drums and the girls explained that in Ancient times this was used to hold alcohol or to cook food . While it is not anymore very common, it will serve as a decoration for the drums in the opening ceremonies .

Another example was the girls’ explanation of the colors of the National Stadium and the National Aquatics Center. The red of the National Stadium symbolizes the male, while the blue of the Aquatics Center is a symbol for the female. The color "red" represents the male energy, while the Aquatics Center's blue color exhibits female elegance. It was truly interesting and we encouraged our team to share such facts with our clients to make their stay as exciting and informative as possible.

Since the buildings were still in lockdown mode we could not actually enter the different venues, but only get to the security controls at the spectator entrances. So, you are asking yourself: “What is lockdown mode?”. Well, at a certain point of time before the Olympic Games the Olympic venues get completely cleared of any people and screened from front to end in terms of security. No people may enter the venue during this time. Step by step the venue is then opened again to various group until it is then ready for complete operation and is opened up to spectators. When we were there, only venue staff and media representatives as well as Olympic Family guests were allowed to enter and this will most likely only change on the day after opening ceremony.

Overall, it was certainly a lot of walking and in the heat of Beijing this is certainly not easy. Yet, these will be our working conditions for the next four weeks, and all of us, especially our hostesses guiding the guests, will have to get used to this. Even high-profile Olympic guests will be required to walk quite a bit.

That was it for that day, and Thursday we moved to our new hotels. We gave our ladies a day off to recoup before things were going to start to pick up.

July 28-29 – Meeting our team

2008-07-29T06:16:00.000-07:00

It’s been an eventful couple of days. After finishing inputting some data into the everslow online management system in the early morning, my fellow program manager and I headed out to the office to finish up putting together some information for the Chinese staff we were going to meet today. And, man, it was crazier than ever at the office. Just like at the silk market, I should bring the camera one day and film for you to understand how busy it is! After about 15 minutes of searching, we found a small spot where we could sit down, organize our binders and print out the things we needed to print out. With people running around, left and right, and a high noise level you are glad when you are done with what you have to do and can move on to wherever you need to go. Let us just get out of here is the theme!

Off we were to the close-by Kerry Centre to meet our Chinese staff. Since our program is fairly small, we only have three Chinese ladies working for us – Yuki, Elecsia, and Sisi. They are all so sweet and very excited to work with our team. For these young women it is the opportunity of a lifetime in these very special Games in China. They are so proud to work for these Olympic Games and present their country to the world.

They first introduced themselves and shared their backgrounds. They are all students at local universities who have graduated our company’s one-year hospitality academy. We introduced them to the program, to their respective roles, to our expectations and what our days will look like over the next couple days and during games time. We decided that we would have a lot of fun over the next few weeks working together – I am convinced that employees who have fun will be enthusiastic and will provide higher service quality than those who don’t.

We met up again the next day to take a tour of the Hotel we will be based in and the surrounding area. We had a staff change though a few hours after our first meeting and Julie, another Chinese lady, was to join our program, while Yuki was to work with yet another group in our organization. Before our tour of the hotel, we welcomed Julie to the team, and Yuki, who had not been aware of this change yet, joined us for this day anyway. She vowed to stay in touch as we had become a close group already after spending a few hours together. She also plans to study in the US starting next year, so we might see her back home. We will miss you Yuki! She is wearing the ‘cool’ Deutschland shirt – isn’t it just so fashionable?

After screening the hotel, we toured the two restaurants our different groups will be dining at outside the Hotel and the Olympic Hospitality Center in the Olympic Green. We took the subway which again was way overfilled. At the same time, the streets appear to still be overfilled too despite at least 50% traffic reduction - oh well, we will see how that will work out! Since we validated our accreditation we can ride the public transport system for free and as you go on subways and buses you see more and more people in uniforms and with accreditations. For the common public we are now a double attraction. Blond hair, light skin, tall, and we have an accreditation! Walking from the subway station to one of the restaurants we stopped at Tiananmen Square. Ok, here is a quiz question - Can you see a difference to the pictures of Tiananmen Square earlier on my blog?

This is only one example of how the city has changed in these three weeks. It is a beautiful setup all over Tiananmen Square presenting and celebrating the Olympic Games. You find the theme of these Games “One world, one dream” on this square, while you also see a beautiful model of the “birdsnest”, the national stadium, alongside a presentation of the different Olympic sports. The Olympic Flame is burning in front of the world globe showing all continents. Then, walking into the center of the square you face a big board “Beijing 2008”, turning 360 degrees so that it can be seen from whichever side you are approaching the scene. It is surrounded by beautiful flowers that make it appear like a center island of the square. On the other side, a beautiful setup of so-called China knots, in full red, China's primary color standing for “Happiness and Harmony” are shown, alongside a set of all different kinds of flowers depicting a bridge. Our Chinese staff could not determine the meaning of the bridge to us. Should I find out later on, I will let you know! On the south end of this whole presentation, red signs with white lettering say in Chinese that “the whole world is celebrating the Olympics”. Another statement right besides it apparently praises a certain government policy opening China to the world for making China harmonious.

Following our walk around Tiananmen Square, we looked at the two restaurants, which are upscale restaurants in Beijing. One is called “Face” and the other one is called “Tian Di Yi Jia” - in case you will travel to Beijing sometime and want to enjoy a special night out. They are very exclusive restaurants and offer a very special environment and are known for their good cuisine. I am sure our guests will enjoy their visit to these places. The restaurant owner gave us a short tour to make us familiar with the place. At a short “meeting” at McDonalds afterwards we discussed the tour and set up tomorrow's plan. This was also the first McDonalds ever where we had a server… have you ever experienced that? It was kind of funny. Good service, I must say. Well, in regards to our crew, we decided to meet up at the Olympic Green the next day where we will have a look at all the Olympic venues and walk the ways we will have to take our clients on when they go to see the scheduled Olympic events.

Both our pre-conference with the hotel earlier that morning and the conference call with our German client on the previous night had confirmed that everything appears to be running very smoothly and we seem to be right on target. Guest lists, hotel rooms, vehicles, restaurants, everything is set up and prepared for the guests to come and the hotel has pretty much all the information already, which is very early in comparison. And, after training our hostesses for the next ten days and focusing them on our program, venues, and clients, the program should run smoothly.

Yet, you have to be prepared for anything. As we found out during the conference call, Lufthansa is on strike and that would certainly not be good if it was still going on later next week….so you never know!

So, tomorrow we will be off to the Olympic Green!

July 25-28 – Getting to know my program

2008-07-29T06:12:00.000-07:00

It’s been all about familiarizing myself with the overall program, getting to know my group and colleagues, preparing our program, finalizing itineraries, as well as inputting important transportation information into the online management system over the past few days. Since most of us have no official office at this time, and the company office is way overfilled, we are mostly working from our hotel rooms or hotel lobbies. As you can see in the picture, if there is no other space we will just use the lobby floor. When there is printing or copy work to do though, we all gather at the office and try to get a chance to get to the copier or printer – it is literally like a ‘zoo’ – so not ideal, but normal in a pre-Olympic Games environment. You have to work with what you have. From experience, it is only going to get more crazy until the first few days of the event are over. Then, things will calm down a bit as things should run smoothly by then.

On Thursday of this week, we will all move to our respective games-time hotels, so we are where or close to the hotel where the client programs are staged. We will also have offices at these respective hotels then as well as hospitality suites for the clients.

Later today, we will meet our Chinese staff and we’ll have an introductory meeting. The main purpose of this first meeting will be to get to know each other and develop a good working atmosphere with our team. After all, we will be working together for the next four weeks! When I called them last night to inform them of our meeting today, we had a nice chat and their English seemed to be very good – a great foundation for their work with us. We will train them in their client specific job. While they have gone through intensive training already, we will use the next two weeks to get them up to speed on our client and the program we are running for the client.

Tonight, we will also have a conference call with our client to discuss the program. Tomorrow, the precon meeting with the hotel our guest group will be staying at and where our respective program will be based is scheduled to take place. We will give them all the up to date information on our client and make sure the hotel is properly prepared for the groups’ arrivals and stays.

There’s been a few new cultural experiences over the past few days too. At the famous silk market you experience the Chinese sales mentality I had addressed previously first-hand. People grab you and scream at you. They are all trying to sell their product at all cost it seems. Again, this is a great place to practice your negotiation skills. Sometimes I just stopped and watched the scene like a movie. I even warned a few store-owners in this huge five-story building with all different kinds of little shops that I would come back and film a segment documenting this experience for my class after the games are over. It is a truly cultural experience to go shopping at this place. One night, we went to a little outside food market in a very central part of town and Wangfujing street (for those who know Beijing). The pictures show you that you would not necessarily find the food they offer on our menu – nevertheless, I tried various kinds of foods (no worries, not those) there and it was delicious! When we got out of this little market place to the main street later that evening, a festival of lights and lit-up bilboards welcomed us and when you look at the picture you will see that it does not look very much like China at all.

At the hotel here meanwhile, you better watch your wallet ordering food or drinks. My advice: Do not order any Evian water at a Ritz Carlton … it cost me nearly 10 USD the other day - and I thought I would actually protect my wallet just drinking water! Wrong thinking! Even a class of wine was cheaper...

Again, I have had the chance to meet many very nice people from all over the world through this job. At the same time, I have been enjoying the few hours of quietness I have had with the amenities here at the hotel. More to follow soon :)

July 22 - 24 - Training and venue tour

2008-07-24T19:51:00.000-07:00

I have enjoyed a wonderful massage here in the hotel a few days ago and it was such a needed pampering. It was my gift to myself for my birthday on Tuesday! To my surprise, the hotel had a little birthday cake waiting for me in my room too, which was a nice gesture. Apart from that treat, it’s been two days of training and one day of venue tour for the more than 200 management staff the company has hired in addition to their regular full-time staff. More than 1.200 local hosts and hostesses bring the number of employees hired for just these Olympic Games to more than 1.500 overall. The organization is the official hospitality provider for the 2008 Olympic Summer Games, and, as such, has booked some 4.000 plus hotel rooms and sold over 300.000 Olympic event tickets for these Games. Moreover, 150 motor coaches and 200 cars and vans are in use. These numbers provide a small indication of the scope of operation Beijing 2008.

While staff received their uniforms in the early morning Tuesday, laptops and cell phones were distributed throughout the day. General company information and some operational info including accreditation issues, information about the training all hosts, hostesses and drivers working for us went through, and a general program overview, were distributed and presented.

In order to provide excellent service to clients, hosts and hostesses were put through a 10-month training academy to be familiarized with Western culture, behavior and conduct, with the Olympic Games and its history, as well as the city of Beijing. The training also focused on developing a sense of independent thinking within these young people who in China’s tradition and culture have been schooled for repetition, but not prepared for critical and independent thinking. This though is needed working on Olympic Games. While familiarity with rules and tasks is important, flexibility is as important in the Olympic Games environment and can make or break a Games event or program.

A few anecdotes shared during the training provided some insight into cultural challenges or conflicts or, in other words, aspects to consider carefully during our work here in China. For one, Peter, the client service director shared a story about a taxi ride in Beijing when he and his staff sat in a taxi as a taxi driver behind them kept pushing the horn, passed the car and drove right in front of their taxi. Both drivers stopped their cars. Then, the aggressive taxi driver got out of the car, walked up to their taxi, opened the door and started beating up on their respective driver…roadrage live in Beijing. ”When I realized what was going on I was just screaming for her to get out of the car and we ran”, the director said. “I advise you that if a situation like that happens to just get away from it as fast as you can”, he continued with the crowd laughing at his comments.

In regards to the hosts and hostesses, the company leaders shared challenges that they are dealing with in regards various issues. One of these is the water supply to students for example. Usually, students’ water use is restricted to certain times during the day. The company now tries to have universities change the rules for Games time to allow hosts and hostesses, who are mostly university students, to not have to follow these rules and to make water available to students regularly, at any time, for them to shower etc. when needed.

A rather funny anecdote addressed hosts or hostesses names. Peter explained that Chinese men or women pick their English name themselves and, “often pick them at an impressionable age”. When he mentioned some of English names the hosts’ or hostesses’ working these Olympic Games had chosen, the whole room burst into laughter: “Hong Kong King Kong”, “Jellyfish”, and “Banana” are just a few examples for names of our hosts and hostesses working these Olympic Games!

When discussing accreditation, the director couldn’t help but tease contractors among us who had sent in pictures that did not meet the clearly explained standards. “We have seen many wonderful gardens, beautiful living rooms, very nice pets….but, unfortunately your dog will not be able to receive an accreditation”, he explained with a smile.

Later, when the corporate restaurant partners where the sponsor guests will dine were presented more closely, Peter outlined various criteria by which the partnering restaurants were chosen. The restaurants’ kitchen practices (are they clean?), the fact whether they engaged in price gauging (did they go up in price over the course of negotiations?), their government connection (do we have to fear that when the local government suddenly wants to meet, our reservation is disregarded?), as well as the question whether they were completely trustworthy (did they have not just a fair price, but also did they want to provide the client with proper service and e.g. not shorten guests stay to only 45 minutes to be able to accommodate more of them). These were all factors considered making the decision for the partnering restaurants. The process implies the application of very high standards to provide the best possible service to guests and partners during the Games.

In addition to sponsor, VIP, and consumer guests, the company will also host a special Yale International Business conference during these Olympic Games. Here, some of these interesting business challenges addressed during the training and many more aspects and issues will be presented and discussed during the Games at one of the official hotels.

During the remaining parts of training we received an overview of all transportation aspects in detail and we were shortly introduced to the databank system. Transport is for sure one of the most important areas for the Olympic Games: If something does go wrong in transportation it will affect the entire Olympic Games and in our case specifically the experience of the invited guests! Also, there are many very special rules for sponsor/VIP transportation and many aspects to consider, which were addressed partly in this training, but will be much more central to the overall preparation once all teams get together with their Chinese staff as well. The transportation grid in the picture show the complexity of this organizational aspect.

Yesterday then, it was time for the venue tour. By bus we drove to the most important venues and the guide provided us with an overview of the driving and parking conditions at each of the venues we visited. I can tell you one thing: the venues are very impressive. We did not yet go inside, but it is amazing just to drive across the city and see the billions of dollars that have been spent on these developments. The Olympic Stadium, the so-called “Birdsnest” is unbelievably beautiful and impressive. The same applies to the Aquatic Centre. The picture below on the left might give you a small indication of this. The picture on the right shows the basketball arena. Unfortunately, the smog did not allow for the picture to come out more clearly. The air is indeed a problem. All the factories around Beijing have been turned off and only people with either even or uneven numbers may drive into the city respectively since this past Sunday, and the pollution today was even worse than last week! They will truly need a lot of chemicals to clear the skies above Beijing – apparently, the city is planning to keep the skies blue and storms away by shooting up such chemicals into the sky starting a couple days before the opening ceremony. It will be seen whether nature can be controlled like that! Only China could even have such an idea!

The traffic sign you see in the picture is an example of how Beijing officials want to make visitors smile announcing the "Beijing Smiling Traffic Police". All over the city people have been trained and instructed to follow rules on how to interact with people from abroad. These rules were specifically put in place during the time of the Olympic Games. For example, you will find no dog meat on Beijing menus, no spitting is allowed, and taxi drivers have supposedly been trained to speak English phrases and hold fundamental conversations (I have not experienced that yet, but we still have two weeks) during the Games time period. These are just a few examples for the many initiatives of Beijing and China officials.

Despite the muggy smog weather, the city tour was very impressive. It is not just the venues themselves that are so impressive, but all the developments surrounding them as well, whether it is parks, office, or commercial buildings or other amenities. The tour of only the most important venues took us from about 10 a.m. until 5 p.m. including a one-hour lunch break – pictures of some of us engaging in a traditional Chinese dance will follow later!

Today now, the work on the project will officially start, while we get to meet our Chinese staff and will start to work with them next week!

July 19-21 - Time to get into 'Games mode'

2008-07-20T11:43:00.000-07:00

It's been a weekend of catching up with work and getting ready for the job here at the Olympic Games as well as putting final touches on my fall semester preparation. The guests and staff at my current hotel were laughing at me this weekend as I was sitting in the bar both days doing my work. Just like I had previously made Borders my doctoral exam office in Tallahassee, or Panera Bread my dissertation office in West Palm, I made the hotel bar my office here in Beijing!

I worked there all day Saturday and Sunday, except for early morning Sunday, when I went up to the North side of the city and met up with the missions team I had met in Inner Mongolia a few days earlier. They had prayed all over the city of Beijing the day before and were leaving in the early afternoon, that same day. It was nice to see them briefly and it gave me a small insight into their work and group. It felt good to pray with them. I certainly look forward to staying in touch with your crew, Ron!

As I was walking back to my hotel on Sunday, I realized how busy the city was finalizing its preparation for the big day, August 8. Wherever you look, the work on buildings, streets, and subways appears to be in the final stages. Olympic flags, posters and other decorations are increasingly visible and more and more staff are coming in. I met two other people working as broadcast technicians in my hotel bar. Beijing is getting ready!

Today, July 21, I moved to the new Hotel, the Ritz Carlton, and I am enjoying the nice amenities after a couple weeks of more primitive travel. Tomorrow, my job will officially start, so it is time to get into 'Games mode'! "Beijing welcomes you" - the theme of these Olympic Games - is greeting you wherever you look.

Inner Mongolia - A day in the desert

2008-07-20T11:16:00.000-07:00

The next day now we were off to the desert. Of course I needed a hat in the desert and there you go - this is it! My new outfit.

This trip was a more commercial one, rather touristy. The place in the desert was somewhat similar to an amusement park. Yet, what made the day was the group of people we were with. Alone that made it worth it to go. Kirsten, the girl from Greenland, Nina and I were joined by a group of seven exchange students from the US. Well, they are all studying in the US, but come from different backgrounds. Kevin from Texas, Nathan from Washington D.C., Jeff from New York, Tiffany from New York, Desmond from Singapour, Oat from Thailand and Joyce from Hong Kong/England were joining in on the trip and we had a great time. From camel riding, to jumping and doing handstands in the sand, to sandsliding down the desert dunes, we did it all. During the drive we enjoyed great conversations and we vowed to stay in touch – through Facebook. Yes, I know, I refused it for so long! I guess I have no choice now.

As on all activities and trips on this journey, I saw again a lot of interesting faces and met a lot of interesting Chinese and Inner Mongolian people... here a few pictures...

Upon our return it was then time to say goodbye for us towards the group of students and also to Kirsten. While we were hopping on the bus to Beijing, Kirsten was flying to Beijing and from there back to Greenland. Our bus ride turned out to be quite an adventure yet again. Mysterious stops once in a while throughout the tour and people exiting, several police controls …I kept the situation in prayer continuously and I know now why it is so hard to find information about buses.

Well, we arrived safely in Beijing at 6 in the morning. The rest of the day I spent organizing my stuff and working. It was nice to see the Beijing hostel staff again and their eyes were shining with surprise when they saw me return. One of them is Maria, from Datong. She is a very nice young girl and I want to stay in touch with her.

July 15-18 - The trip to Inner Mongolia and the Grasslands

2008-07-20T09:50:00.000-07:00

At 5:20 p.m. we boarded the bus and wondered why it was a sleeper bus. We were wondering whether we were on the wrong bus perhaps. We did not understand why we would need a sleeper bus for a six-hour trip. According to the hostel travel agent, the bus was scheduled to arrive at 11:30 at night in Hohhot. After we finally had several people confirm to us with hand and feet that we were on the right bus indeed, we also found out that the arrival time was not 11:30 but somewhere between 2:00 and 3:00 in the morning. Oh man! What had we gotten into? Oh well, off we went on our adventure!

As the bus left the station, we took out the translation section of our travel guide books and tried to exchange some words with and get some more information from our bus ‘neighbors’. Perhaps this would be an opportunity to learn some Chinese? Well, we did not have to. Suddenly, a young man, very shy, appeared and asked if he could help us. He was a young kid who had studied English in High School and spoke English fairly well. Him, his dad, who spoke no English, and another young man who spoke a little English, we all shared about our respective backgrounds. They were truly nice people and made our trip very entertaining. They confirmed to us the late arrival in Hohhot. This was to no surprise to us anymore after riding the bus for a couple hours. The driver stopped all the time to let more people in or out, and took small little breaks all the time, throughout.

After a few hours on the bus, most of the people in the bus were sleeping as I was typing out my blog. The strange Kong Fu movie that was on TV had been turned off and the TV sound had been turned down. At some point, the bus suddenly stopped and people were getting out. The young man speaking English said that this was an opportunity to go to the bathroom, so we wanted to grab our stuff and go…..only for the driver to hold us back. Of course, we did not understand a word, but eventually guessed correctly that it was only a bathroom in the wilderness. As the young English speaker returned he informed us that about one hour later, we would have the chance to go too! Yippea!

And, we did indeed have the chance to go to the restroom during our bus ride and it was quite an experience. The place where we stopped was like…I am even struggling to find the right word….it was this huge dirty parking spot where tons of buses stopped to let their passengers go to the bathroom. It was open standing toilets with no walls in between. It was quite an experience and the first thought that came to me was: “Wow, now I am experiencing the real China.” The father and son we had talked to were somewhat embarrassed about the place. They were just returning from a trip to Japan and probably knew that we were not used to places like this. I could tell by the look on their face as we were all standing outside waiting for the bus to depart again. As we were talking, I suddenly realized that a young Chinese man had joined our group. Wherever we walked he would stand right besides us. I smiled at him once in a while and he smiled back, and at some point I asked the English-speaking son to ask this young visitor ‘if he was an athlete’. I asked this because he was dressed like one. The young man realized we were talking about him, blushed and before we could do anything else he fled, he was literally running away. Poor guy, I felt truly sorry for him as he had completely misunderstood the situation and shy as he was, was running away.

Back in the bus, we all went back to sleep. The next thing I remember is waking up at 2:30 when the bus stopped and the lights in the bus were turned on. Apparently, we had arrived in Hohhot. Still half asleep, I went and took my luggage to the door where I put my shoes on. A crowd of about 15 people was standing outside the bus door and chatting with the driver. There, the most amazing situation happened. As I was standing up on top of the stairs getting ready to get out looking down the stairs into their faces, they all had become quiet looking up at me with great expectation. Only then I realized that it was all cab drivers, and as I realized it I think a smile or grin, a certain expression must have come on my face. I don’t know how, but somehow it must have shown on my face that I suddenly understood what was happening and they all started to laugh at the same time, right at that moment. It was this amazing experience that I will never forget and wish I could have filmed. It was great.

When I got out, standing amidst this crowd of cab drivers, I first decided to wait for Nina. I could see the concern on her face. She expected the worst as she told me later. When she got out, we decided for a car and sat down. Then we called the hostel, handed the phone to the driver and the staff described the way to him. All the other cab drivers were standing around the car looking at us in aw, some of them with a disappointed, some of them with an upset expression on their face. Well, our chosen driver finally appeared to know where he was going and handed the phone back to me. Right at that moment, the young man who had very little knowledge of the English language (one of the three men we had communicated with earlier) came walking up to the taxi asking whether everything was ok and if we needed help. He made sure the price was going to be ok and off we went. That was so nice! Mongolians seemed very friendly, more so than the Beijing people, especially taxi drivers. The cab driver got lost one time on the way to the guesthouse, but arrived at around 3:00 a.m. at a guest house, a house in which a Mongolian family rents out rooms in their house to tourists.

Getting up the next morning, we met a group of Christian missionaries from Seattle, Washington who shared with us about their trip and their experiences. Especially their stories about their work in the country Mongolia were very interesting. Among other things, they were outlining the difference between Mongolia and Inner Mongolia in terms of mission work.

Later, we met more people from all over the world, including Kirsten from Greenland, and Hannah and Adrianne from Great Britain. The three of them joined us later that afternoon on our tour to the grasslands. Our guesthouse tour guides were Kitty and Z (I just could not keep his full name), and along with our driver we were eight people total going on the tour. The roads were leading us through green, hilly valleys up on a plateau and beyond this plateau the Mongolian grasslands start. Not far from here we stayed with a Mongolian single family home overnight.

Overall, the people here still live very primitively. This specific family had two bedrooms, a kitchen, and a living/dining room. Very characteristic are the beds. They are built on brick and underneath these beds you can make a fire. This way, in winter, your bed is warm. I found that a very neat idea. All the stoves in the kitchen are also heated with fire. There is no bathroom or toilet, but on the other hand they have a TV, car and cell phone. This was kind of a paradox situation to me. Talk about different priorities.

When we arrived, we were first introduced to our hosts and served some hot milk tea – I love it! The family consisted of mom, dad and two girls, 19 and 12 respectively. They had beautiful eyes, the characteristic that impressed me the strongest about Mongolians in general. Another Mongolian girl, Malina, who is usually part of the guesthouse staff, waited for us at the house as well. She was the cook.

Then, we went on a nice walk through the grassland to a lake that was a few hundred meters (yards) from the house. From there we walked further into the grasslands, uphill. Kitty, our female tour guide, lead us on the walk in Mongolian style taking her umbrella for protection from the heat. We would never loose her, just like you will never loose a Chinese tourist ever. They are so noisy! We ended up walking for a couple hours.

During the first part of the walk, Z and I shared about our respective backgrounds in a quite long conversation. Z is a 22-year-old math student and very knowledgeable about the NBA. Later, Kitty shared a lot of background about her family life with Kirsten, Nina and me. It was so interesting. She shared about how she grew up in the Northeastern part of Inner Mongolia at the Russian border, about her family environment and conditions, about her school, and about the future. Unlike many other Chinese people I have encountered during my short stay she was very open and her English was very good even though she only started learning it at University only. She had just finished her Masters Degree and was doing this interim job as a tour guide. She shared that her parents were very poor and that they had to take care of six children and of her mom’s four younger brothers. Her mom did want more opportunities for her kids and made sure they could all go to school to obtain a proper education. Today, her mom lives with Kitty in Hohhot while her dad has died a few years ago. She later shared with me that she is working on the TOEFL and other English Language tests to be able to continue her education outside China.

We encountered many beautiful things on our walk and the most mesmerizing was the smell. There were these little flowers all across the grass and they smelled so beautifully, that I kept inhaling them! On top of a little hill we were passing a monument-like pile of stones and as a sign of love for the country and the grasslands, we through a stone on top of it. This is a tradition in the Mongolian grasslands.

Following the walk we came back ‘home’ and so did the family horses. They go to work in the morning and return back home at night. The same with the sheep, they are all on trained schedule. Then, it was time for a delicious dinner. Chicken, rice, potatoes, vegetables Mongolian style were on the menu. We ate outside on the ‘family porch’, which you see in the pictures is not a true family porch. The cats, the chickens, they all joined around us when eating.

After dinner it cooled down and we set up a play table in our original ‘Mongolian house’ – what looks like a tent in the pictures above. After playing cards we watched the sun go down. Within a few minutes the man of the house started a camp fire with cow poo (there is no wood there). We all ended up standing around the fire warming ourselves and chatting. Then each one of us sang a song representative of their home country, which was great. The Mongolians impressed everybody with their great voices. All three of them sang beautifully and gave us a deeper impression of the Mongolian culture. Z later even presented parts of a Mongolian dance. He was trying to teach us as well with rather limited success.

Then, I was very surprised when Kitty during a quiet moment towards the end of the evening asked us how we prayed for other people. I had not communicated in any way with her about anything in that regard. I offered to show her and the group to pray for them and so I did. It was a very powerful experience.

The next morning then we got up at 4:30 to watch the beautiful sunrise over the grasslands. It had been a while since I got up that early to see the sun rise but it was well worth it. After going back to sleep for a brief period of time right after, we later ate a delicious breakfast and were off to go horseback riding. Yet, the car was making trouble and would not start. The driver had issues with the battery and tried all different ways to fix it. One way a cable burned down, another way he had us push the car. In the end he took nearly the whole car apart in front of our eyes to fix this. It was amazing.

Well, as you see on the pictures, we made it to horseback riding and we made it home in the end too! Horseback riding was fun. The horses would not listen to our commands though. As much as we wanted to copy the Mongolian guide remarks, the horses wouldn’t move to those or regular horse commands. While we were mostly going slow, Still, my bottom certainly felt sore from horseback riding the following day and day after, but it was well worth it as well. The Mongolian horse guides were dressed in their traditional uniforms and along with their horses they appeared very original. Later, a few of us did the same and dressed up in the same style, as you see in the pictures. While horses fit this outfit perfectly, it was weird to see these men with brand new cars – those two don’t go that well together!

After a delicious lunch we drove back home, rested in the guesthouse for a little while in the afternoon and were then off to try some delicious hot pot dinner Mongolian style. After we figured out the menu and what we wanted to order, it was so yummie and we ate and ate for a total of two Euros each!

July 14/15, 2008 - Inner Mongolia trip preparation

2008-07-20T08:37:00.000-07:00

Monday and Tuesday I spent mostly catching up on work. Most of the two days, I sat in the hotel restaurant/bar typing away on my computer. As I had kept putting off making a decision on the trip to Inner Mongolia, I also did some research on that finally. Throughout the day Monday, early in the morning and in between work, I tried to arrange for our travels there. I also finally found out who my client was going to be during my Olympic Games job. Volkswagen/Audi, one of the biggest sponsors of the Games, is the account that I am going to work on. I am excited!

In regards to our travels, Nina and I met early at the train station to check out train schedules. Yet, as it was only a day before our planned travels, overnight trains were all booked. We discussed other options, but flights were expensive relative to the few days we were going to spend in this Northern part of the country. Our discussion led us to McDonalds, where we also met a very friendly Chinese family. I quickly engaged in a conversation with the two children who spoke a little bit of English. They kindly wrote down their name in English letters for us so we could say it: Hong mu-zi and Xiong Wei. This was yet again a nice encounter lightening up our day.

Later, we found a potential solution for our travel troubles too. I had kept praying that if I was supposed to go, God would open a door and I found out about a bus from Beijing to Hohhot, and from Hohhot to Beijing. The owner of the guesthouse in Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, where we were going to stay, told me about it and without him I would have never known. Neither my Beijing hotel staff knew about a bus to Hohhot nor could you find any information about it online. Next, I found out that you cannot book the bus until the morning of the same day of your travels – at least at this place that was recommended. So, well, it was going to be a last-minute decision of whether we would go or not.

As you can see bus travel is very unique in China and so is train travel: you cannot book your train ticket from e.g. Shanghai to Beijing when you are in Beijing or when you are in a city in China other than Shanghai. You can only book for departures from the city you are in. It is a very strange set-up. At the same time the trains are booked very early as there are not that many connections between the cities and many travelers around this time of year. For flights I can recommend the website ctrip.com and elong.com as they appear to be the best ones to find good deals within China.

Well, I ended up getting bus tickets for us Tuesday morning. I then reserved a guesthouse room in Hohhot, and arranged for our pick up from the bus station. Nina and I finally started off on our travels in the late afternoon by taxi.

July 12/13, 2008 - Summer Palace & Temple of Heaven

2008-07-20T07:53:00.000-07:00

I was writing an email to my friend Shirley on Friday night after our Great Wall trip stating that I am yet waiting to for the first time see the sky over Beijing and China. Even a three-hour trip away from Beijing at the Great Wall, the foggy weather had not completely cleared up the day before. Right away, a few hours after my weather complaint, I woke up by sun beams shining through the curtain in my hotel room early Saturday morning and I decided on the spot to take advantage of this great weather and go see the summer palace.

I had heard about a boat running to the imperial palace and the beautiful park surrounding it and this was the perfect activity in this type of weather. Learning from my experience two days earlier to not underestimate the distances in Beijing, I took the subway to get to the Beijing Zoo. According to my travel guide book, the boat to the palace was supposed to leave not far from there. On the subway, I met a couple from Argentina. You are probably wondering at this point how in the world I meet all these people. Well, for one most of you know that I am very outgoing, and, for two, you must understand that during this time not many international tourists are traveling in this city. Hence, everybody who is not speaking Chinese is very excited to meet somebody who indeed does speak English and we all engage in conversations very easily.

The couple from Argentina had arrived in Beijing from – yes, here we go again - Hohhot in Inner Mongolia, where they had attended a grassland conference (I did not know either that something like that exists) a few days earlier. We chatted a little bit and they confirmed to me where exactly the boat to the summer palace was leaving from. They also highly recommended Inner Mongolia to me.

As I had to buy a ticket to cross the zoo and board the boat in the zoo, I was blessed to see a beautiful China panda bear hanging in the trees on the way. Don't you just love this picture? It is definitely one of my favorite ones! Other than this cute scene, the zoo did not strike me very animal friendly offering them very little space, which I don’t like. Also, too many people were trying to get a glimpse of the animals.

After struggling repeatedly with Chinese signage and descriptions of the way to the boat, I finally ended up at the dock where the boat was to leave. Another lesson from this China adventure: You better know where you are going. Signage and descriptions of the way are not very good in China, even if they are in English, they are not very accurate.

At this boat dock, I met another family from abroad. The parents were originally from Chile but had lived in Canada for a long time and their kids were born there. Since last year though they have lived in Beijing and this day they hosted five of their son’s friends on this trip to the summer palace. The lady shared with me many things about Beijing including that the city has plenty of sunshine during spring and winter, but that the summer months of July and August and the associated weather patterns are responsible for the many cloudy days and fog around this time of the year. She shared about her life in Beijing and that since they moved to Beijing they have had visitors non-stop. For this reason and to have some privacy, she and her husband were escaping for two weeks on a vacation to, yes, Inner Mongolia.

On the boat tour we of course understood nothing the Chinese tour guide said, yet it was a very enjoyable ride along the beautiful river front compared to the hot drive in a bus without air condition, which would have been the other option. Arriving at Summer Palace, the family invited me to come by their house one day for dinner after their return from their vacation in early August and we exchanged business cards. The husband is working on a China-Canada government project in the area of health. They were just so nice.

Upon our arrival at summer palace, I met more people. I spoke to two guys, one from Germany and one from Great Britain, and a young lady, also from Germany. While the three of them had met a few days earlier, I joined the group on the spot right there. Hauke is in Beijing to work the Olympic Games for German television. Daniel had just finished a Kong Fu class in the north west of the country and Nina is a student from Germany visiting a friend who, like Hauke, works for German TV around the Olympic Games. We clicked right away, had a great time and enjoyed the nice park and the imperial landmark we were visiting. While many tourists were visiting the palace that day, we managed to escape the stream of people at times by taking narrow paths through the woods enjoying the calm and peaceful nature. Moreover, Nina and I found out in our conversations throughout the day, that we had both thought about visiting Inner Mongolia. She had planned to go earlier with another friend, but could not pull it off. We decided that we would look into the possibility of going on this trip together.

Hauke, Nina and I later also went for diner and a bar later. Members of the German television crew who were already on-site were meeting there, and we joined in. This was fun as it allowed me to engage in interesting conversations around the topic of media. Having worked with the media a lot and especially at Olympic Games, sharing stories stirred up some memories about both Salt Lake 2002 and Athens 2004. We all agreed that I should pay a visit to the International Broadcast Center at some point during the next few weeks as my job would allow me to.

Sunday, July 13

On Sunday then, I went to see the Temple of Heaven, another major Beijing landmark and again, I ran into a bunch of internationals. I met a French family, a German intern for Volkswagen who was just recently hired full-time, and a Chinese man who spoke German fluently as he was working for Volkswagen as well. I also ran into a German who lives in Orlando and spends a few months in Beijing learning Chinese and his friend who works in Switzerland and is here to learn Chinese as well. Among other things, they told me about their upcoming trip to …yes, indeed, … Hohhot, in Inner Mongolia!

In the following you see a selection of pictures from this temple. The number of pictures I took in total is endless...

Upon my return back to the hotel, I very much appreciated the opportunity to watch my home churches Sunday service online. Our church, Christ Fellowship, does live streaming of its services. I was tired from all the walking today and all the previous day and needed this time with God. I ended up connecting with our internet pastor for the first time ever and even found out that he is of German descent. I had no clue!

July 11, 2008 - The Great Wall

2008-07-20T07:14:00.000-07:00

Today’s travel destination was the Great Wall. At 6 a.m., a tour guide picked us up at the hotel and we took off walking to the main street along with tour participants from other hostels. There, a bus was waiting for us and we headed off towards Jinshanglin, from where we were going to take a 10km hike on one of the oldest parts of the Great Wall. The hotel staff had given me the advice to go on this tour as it is the supposedly least frequented part of the Great Wall due to the greater distance to Beijing. Mostly sleeping on the bus, I was surprised to see the German family from Porta Westfalica when we arrived – small world of Beijing yet again. I was surprised as they had shared during our tour of Forbidden City that they will not go hiking on the Great Wall, since they could not do it physically. Apparently, it was a mistake of their hotel staff who booked them on the wrong tour.

While they stayed with the tour staff, we went off to start our hike. After a short trip with the cable car, the walk started off quite fiercely right away with a pretty strong incline. Steep descents and inclines followed one after the other. While at first enjoying a nice conversation with a British living in the Netherlands, and a Canadian living in London, I ended up taking the walk with a group of people from multiple national backgrounds. One couple was from Germany, two young brothers from the US, a group of friends from Australia, and a couple girls from the Netherlands and Sweden respectively – we all walked pretty much in a group exchanging information about each other and our respective countries and backgrounds, and sharing our China and other travel experiences. One Chinese characteristic was again the many men and women along the way who tried to sell us water and commemorative items during the entire trip. “Bu Jao” – “I don’t want anything” certainly is one of the most important words when traveling to China and I learned that word during this hike for sure.

We could mostly get rid of all of them by being respectfully firm, but one of them was a nice, older man, who seemingly was not as obnoxious as the others and appeared to have a good heart. He shared with us that he keeps walking half of the distance to Simatai five times every day to feed his family. He was from …guess where….yes, exactly: Inner Mongolia. He became a private tour guide to us, took pictures of us, and at the half point of our hike, where he was to turn around we gave him a good tip as a thank you. All in all, we climbed 30 Great Wall towers, or however you want to call it. In between we were wishing very strongly to be a few less of those towers ahead….The British guy and Canadian girl even told me after the tour was over that they literally thought about turning around at about the 11^th tower. Just like the German family they did not expect a hike, and thought until then that they were on a different tour. Thankfully, travelers following behind them informed them that they could not turn around and so they stayed on track. In the end they were glad about the mistake of the hostel and would not have wanted to miss this adventure.

Before reaching our destination we had to cross a bridge that reminded me very much of movies like Tarzan or Indiana Jones. Perhaps you understand when you look at the pictures above. After another steep hike, we had the joy of looking back on our path and finished our decent about half an hour later.

You certainly should not be afraid of heights taking this tour. The steep stairs and crossing areas like this bridge certainly would challenge you greatly in that regard. It was a great adventure and certainly one of the highlights walking on such historical ground in such an amazing natural environment.

July 10, 2008 - Beihai and Jingshan Park

2008-07-20T05:40:00.000-07:00

The next day, I planned to go to Beihai and Jingshan Park just Northwest and North of the Forbidden City, as well as to the famous Lama temple somewhat further to the North East of the city. I started out with Beihai park and spent about three hours there walking on the shores of the large lake in the center of the park. A bridge connects the land around the lake with a hill on a small island. Walking up the hill on winding paths I finally reached the White Dagoba, a monument similar to a temple situated on top of the hill. During this park visit I learned another fact about China: Things might be cheap or cheaper in China, but nothing is for free! While I paid an entrance fee to the park, every other building, temple, cave or Dagoba cost extra and that is a general phenomenon to get used to when traveling to China.

During my walk, I was asked countless times to be photographed with Chinese people, often with little children. This had already been the case the day before as just like in the Forbidden City, there were not many international tourists in this park. Instead, there are many Chinese tourists who obviously have not been exposed to people from abroad at all. Many of them appeared to have never seen a white person with blond hair. They would ask me to take pictures, they would try to secretly take pictures, they would chat secretly about me and break into laughter when they realized I discovered them talking about me. A German acquaintance who repeatedly experienced the same phenomenon, later put it this way: “Now we know how all the famous people must feel with all the paparazzi and media following them everywhere”.

Later on, I was surprised as a Chinese woman approached me speaking English. It turned out she was originally Chinese but had been living in the US with her family for more than 20 years. Her husband, a professor in Rhode Island worked on a project for a big university in Beijing for a month and she used to the time to visit Beijing with her kids and introduce the kids to her native language at a deeper level than it is possible back in the States. At last, I had met a Chinese person whom I could communicate normally with and not just by using my hand and feet, and pointing at things!

Consequently, I made it to Jingshan Park or Scenic Mountain Park. The scenic mountain at the center of the park was piled up artificially hundreds of years ago and from its top I enjoyed the great view of the imperial palace of Forbidden City. The last of these pictures shows the spot where the last emperor hanged himself.

Leaving the park, a Chinese girl gave me the advice to take the taxi or bus to lama temple but I was determined to walk there. Well, I did, but only to arrive there after it was closed already. Man, it was a long way! In this context it is important to remember that asking for directions is a major undertaking in Beijing as not many people speak English! This was quite an adventure leading me across parts of Beijing that I probably would not have seen otherwise though. In an area Northeast of Forbidden City for example, I walked through a very neat Hutong area with many small shops and cafes. On the streets I saw many Chinese sitting outside playing the traditional game of Chinese chess, and witnessed the life in Beijing away from the main streets.

July 9, 2008 - Forbidden City

2008-07-20T04:19:00.001-07:00

On this first day, I decided to first go see Tiananmen Square – the sweeping square of the gate of Heavenly Peace – and Forbidden City. Tiananmen Square is a huge square where in 1989 student demonstrations were violently ended. The National People’s Congress (NPC), China’s parliament meets in the Great Hall of the people on the west side of the square and other historic buildings. Every night a military parade to lower the Chinese flag is attended by thousands and thousands of Chinese people. The first time I experienced this I was curious about what had happened and found out that this is a daily event. Approaching forbidden City walking north on Tianmen Square the big portrait of Mao Zedong, the founder of the People’s Republic of China, on the Gate of Heavenly Peace gazes over the square.

Upon entering the gate of Heavenly Peace I met a German family from Porta Westfalica and we decided to go on the tour of Forbidden City together. Climbing up on the gate first, we enjoyed an impressive view of the Tiananmen Square from above.

We hired an English-speaking tour guide, who originally was from Inner Mongolia, who gave us a detailed tour of the whole complex. Forbidden City was China’s Imperial Palace for almost five centuries. It was built from 1406 to 1420 and constituted the home of the emperor and the ceremonial and political centre of China. We were guided in all of the palaces and many halls with different exhibitions presenting different aspects of the emperors' lives. We were led through the outer and inner courts of the Forbidden City and the guide explained the meaning of all the different statues and symbols. The pictures can only provide an impression, a glimpse of this amazing Palace.

This was the emperor's 'throne'. All you women though, aren't we lucky that we don't have to wear shoes like the emperor's wife at our wedding?

Shortly before the end of our tour we wanted to take a group picture with our guide and asked a lady to please take one. She did, but many other people wanted to join into the picture and have a picture taken with their respective cameras. The Chinese tourists were thrilled to see white Europeans like us. It took a quite a few minutes until everybody was positioned and pictures were taken with all the cameras. That was quite a funny experience.

After the tour and a first original Chinese meal, the family and I went our separate ways exchanging email addresses for potential future joint activities. Walking further east I was passing through a big-shopping street in Beijing, a non-driving zone, ‘Fussgaengerzone’ in German. It was very interesting as this area felt like it could be in any city in the world. Showing on the huge video screens was a replay of the semifinal of the European Soccer Championships
between Germany and Turkey, a funny taste of home right in the
midst of China.

Passing by many big hotels on the walk home I walked through little parks along the street leading back west. I must say that Beijing overall has many green spots and many nice little and big parks. This was when I faced a very typical situation in China. As I was walking in the early evening, a girl approached me and engaged me in a conversation inviting me to go see her art exhibition. I was tired though from walking all day and did not feel inclined to accompany her at first, but finally agreed to take a look at her work after all….of course she and her fellow artists wanted to sell me items. They had nice art work presented there, but I remembered the warnings of people and followed their advice to negotiate fiercely. Finally, I ended up buying some artwork from them negotiating a 50% discount, and as I was passing by another art store on the way back, I somehow ended up in this respective owner’s store as well. Part of me just wanted to sit down.

Since I was not interested in buying anything else at all anymore I negotiated really well this time and impressed a whole group of Chinese people sitting outside of the store….they remember me to this day! Somehow I have run across this owner three times since then, and he does not even live close to my neighborhood. So, even here in this huge city, the world is small. Well, in conclusion, if you need to your practice negotiation skills, I advise you to go to China!

But the day was not yet done. At night I sat down in the restaurant and ended up chatting with two British travelers who had journeyed around China and other Asian countries for a long time. We were all lone travelers and shared stories. One of the two young men had just come to Beijing from a trip to Inner Mongolia. Interestingly, he was about the third or fourth person I had met up to this point who was either from Inner Mongolia or who had just been there. He gave me information about a small hostel/hotel there and highly suggested me going there….it was weird. As I had shared before, I had felt inclined to go down further south and see the impressive landscape down there. Yet, now that I had arrived, Inner Mongolia was brought up repeatedly. In fact, many people discouraged me from going to the area I had looked at originally in the South, mostly due to the supposedly lingering effects of the rather recent earthquake.

As I was doing more research, I found out that Inner Mongolia in Northern China was known for its primitive lifestyle, desert and grassland landscape and supposedly was quite different from the modern and highly developed Beijing. Was I supposed to go there?

July 8, 2008 - Hello Beijing!

2008-07-20T03:38:00.000-07:00

The flight was uneventful and we arrived at around 2:30 p.m. China time. The Beijing airport is very modern and very nice as you can see for yourself in the pictures. You also see that the Olympic theme was all evident already at the airport. One world, one dream – the theme of the Olympic Games welcomes you right there!

I had decided to travel to China 12 days before the start of my consulting job as I wanted to experience the city and country a little bit outside of the Olympic Games job. Hence, I had organized a small hotel to stay in for the first two nights. I had come across the place online. I did not know what to expect as I did not know much about it except for that it was very centrally located and that it had a couple of decent reviews. I figured I would check it out and see whether I liked it or not and for that matter for how long I would stay. I had also thought about traveling to another area in China and specifically had a place in Southern China in mind – Guilin – where the impressive landscape around the Li River lured me. Overall, I had no exact idea of how many of the 12 days I would stay in Beijing and where else I would end up going and for how long. The deep conversation with the German youngster also left no time for me to truly look at my China guide during my flight. Thus, upon my arrival I had not much of a clue of how exactly my next 12 days were going to play out.

After landing and passing immigration and customs, I said good-bye to the young German athletes and decided to take a taxi to the hotel. There is a bus going downtown, but I decided it was less of a hassle and worth the extra 13 Dollars for the about 1-hour trip into downtown Beijing. I had printed out the directions both in English and Chinese, and handed it to the taxi driver and expected things to be ok. He looked at the directions with a question mark in his eyes though as he headed out of the airport ramp. Only then I realized that I had left my China travel guide in the trunk which had a few Chinese words listed. Great! Of course, the taxi driver did not speak one English word except for ‘ok’. After asking him with hand and feet whether he knew where he was going, he finally said ‘ok’, which didn’t leave me feeling much more confident in him due to his body
language. Well, I enjoyed the ride into the city anyway taking in
the scenery around me including the many high rises and monumental buildings. Olympic flags and signage were already marking the main road from the airport into the city. Most signs were in English including "Don't drink and drive" as you see on the picture. The sky was cloudy and it was kind of foggy or hazy. I couldn’t decide if it was fog or smog.

When we got closer to downtown Beijing the taxi driver picked up the phone and called somebody – whether it was his office or the hotel I did not know – and after my question if everything was ok he again said ‘ok’. I said to myself ‘oh, oh’ and reiterated to him that I would not pay more than 100 Yuan as I had been instructed by information service personnel at the airport.

Well, needless to say that we drove around for about 20 more minutes and finally after another call of his we ended up in this little, tiny, narrow street, just like I had seen it in movies and documentaries about China. The streets were pretty dirty, people were sitting outside their little houses, cooking or just talking, kids were playing and running around in the streets. Bikes were everywhere and with cars standing on the side of the street in some areas, the taxi could barely get through. A little bit further up the road, the street was blocked with bikes on one side and a car on the other. It was too narrow for the car to pass through. The cars behind were pushing the horn. After a shouting match with the driver behind him, the taxi driver climbed over the seats on the right side to get out of the car as the left door wouldn’t open far anywhere far enough for him to get out. He went and lifted the bikes off of the side of the road and pushed the side mirrors to the inside. Then, he climbed back into his seat and very slowly drove the car ahead with a woman standing on the street guiding him and waving for him to stir in the direction she was pointing out.

Within me I had been praying throughout the entire cab ride and eventually had become a little concerned about where the driver was going. Yet, as we were going through this whole ordeal I couldn’t help but start laughing. It was such an original experience to start my China adventure with. The people on the street were looking at me first in astonishment, and then, once they saw my smile they started smiling as well. Overall, they looked at me like I was from an outer planet. It seemed like they had never seen a white, long-haired blond.

At about 5:30 we finally arrived at the hotel. It was not far from the place where this situation had occurred and I must admit I was first a little skeptical, probably mostly due to the adventurous taxi journey I had just experienced. Yet, when I saw the restaurant/bar downstairs and then got to take a look at the room, which was clean and included air conditioning as well as wireless internet, I felt relieved. First thing, I called my family to let them know that I arrived safely as they had been concerned about me traveling on my own in this part of the world.

Walking around the hotel area later on, I very much started to appreciate the area which is very close to the center of town and Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City Palace, and many other major sites in Beijing. Throughout these days that I have been staying here, it has exposed me to a part of Chinese life that I wouldn’t experience staying in a higher-class hotel in a more touristy area. It is located in the unique world of Beijing’s hutongs (from the Mongolian word for a passageway) that thread across the city featuring four-walled courtyards in hutong neighborhoods.

Falling asleep bright and early after this adventurous trip, I awoke early hearing people working and talking out on the street as early as 6 a.m. the following day, a common phenomenon in Beijing. This was going to be my first full day in Beijing - I was excited.

The trip to China

2008-07-20T03:37:00.000-07:00

Well, my flight to China was supposed to leave Frankfurt at 5:40 p.m., but in the end, I did not leave Frankfurt airport until 11:30 p.m….the reason? Well, originally, I was supposed to fly to Beijing through Copenhagen. This flight though was delayed due to technical problems and since my layover at the Copenhagen airport was only 1.5 hours, I would have missed my flight to Beijing. With 12 passengers connecting to Beijing, the airline inquired whether the plane would be waiting for us. The reply was no and so the airline decided to rebook us on a direct flight to Beijing with China Air instead of setting us up in a Copenhagen hotel for one night. This respective flight was originally supposed to leave at 8 p.m., yet was also delayed and ultimately did not leave until 11:30….Well, I tried to make the most out of the situation and utilized the time at the airport connecting and sharing with many people.

At first I met a German family who was on their way to a family vacation and who was worried that this delay and a possible overnight stay in Copenhagen would mess up their travel plans. I tried my best calming their worries as I have learned to deal with such unexpected interruptions over the years. In between, I chatted for a long time with a German student who was off to China to intern with a corporation. He had been to china various times before and shared some of his experiences and had some good tips on food and other areas of Chinese life. Because of the delay the airline treated us for diner in a nice restaurant and while we ate, a group of young men sat down at the table besides us. They looked like athletes to me and I recognized their language as German. As a sport management professor and professional, I approached them and we ended up chatting. They were young cycling professionals from Germany and the Czech Republic and were on their way to a professional cycling tour in the northwest of China. It turned out they were on the same flight as me. We shared and then went our separate ways. Yet, upon boarding the 500-seat plane, I was sitting right by these young German athletes. Later that evening, it showed that this was no coincidence but God’s plan as he allowed me to minister to one of the youngsters by sharing my own experiences as they related to his situation. It was very powerful and even the kid acknowledged that it was very ‘strange’ how all this played out with me approaching them before the flight, us sitting right by each other in the plane and us ending up engaging in this kind of conversation. And, I was not even supposed to be on the plane in the first place. This was a very neat experience.

July 7

2008-07-20T03:21:00.000-07:00

On July 6, after saying goodbye to my parents and my brother and his family, my sister and her husband took me back with them to Frankfurt where I was to leave for Beijing the next day. On the way, we dropped off Cornelia in Heidelberg. Looking back, I guess it was a gradual or step-by-step goodbye to everybody, which is a bit easier than doing it all at once I suppose. The next morning it was time for final packing and for the first time ever I was able to fit everything into one suitcase. Those who know me appreciate this and know this is a miracle! I can promise though already that the miracle won’t last any longer than until my return from China. China offers too many unique shopping opportunities! Also, yummie food items are waiting at my sister’s to be picked up and brought back home to West Palm so I can do some more cooking and baking there. I think I will have to be careful to make sure that at the end of the day two suitcases will be enough.

After sharing a cup of coffee and a last piece of home-made cake with my sister and brother-in-law in the afternoon – a very traditional meal in Germany – they dropped me off at the airport at about 2:30 p.m. where I was scheduled to leave at 5:40 p.m.

June 20 - July 6 - Back home-home

2008-07-20T00:45:00.000-07:00

Then we left for my true home, what I usually call home-home. I call this home-home, to distinguish between what my home is now - the US - and my original home back in Germany.

My parents still live where I was born and where I grew up in a small town called Loeffingen in the Black Forest, close to the border to Switzerland and France. This is also where my brother and his family live. The pictures show first Loeffingen's small city center and then the view from afar on the town taken walking across fields to visit a local festival in a small neighbortown.

The festival "Sonnenwendfeier" is celebrated every year on June 21 as it is the longest day of the year. The pictures show my mom, aunt and uncle, the "Alphornblaeser" who played traditional music and the huge fire that was made.

Upon our arrival in the Black Forest, the sun made it through completely and the Florida weather had now officially arrived with me in Germany. Enjoying the nice hot weather we spent the next two weeks with many outdoors activities, including trips to the swimming pool with my nieces, journeys around the Black Forest, a trip to Austria, as well as a journey to the biggest lake in Europe, Lake Constance.

The following pictures were taken during our trip to lake "Silvretta" in Austria. It takes you about three hours from my parents' house to get to this place.

After walking around Lake Silvretta we went on to the famous ski resort "Ischgl"

Climbing up to the rebuilt calvary, I lifted many of you up in prayer before it was time for our return trip.

Another day my parents and I took a tour across our area in the Black Forest. We first went to a farmer's restaurant in Staufen, near Freiburg, about an hour from Loeffingen. Here we walked up to the ancient town castle. The last picture shows the scenery you typically encounter driving through the black forest.

When my two sisters were visiting, we took another daytrip, this time to lake constance. Lake Constance is the biggest lake in Europe and has Mediterranean climate in the summer.

Overall, the stay in the Black Forest region gave me the opportunity to spend a lot of time with my parents, my two little nieces, and my aunts and uncles. Also, I was able to catch up with old-time friends from elementary school age. Some of my high school friends had returned back home for the summer as well and as I have found out this time, many of them actually live abroad, including countries such as Finland, Switzerland, England, and the US. Shortly before leaving, I met up with my old friend Magdale from New York who married a German and now lives in Stuttgart, Germany, not too far from my parents. Moreover, throughout the entire Germany stay I was able to witness yet again Germany’s soccer fever, as the excitement around the success of the national team in the European championships was evident in the media as well as on the street. Even in my little hometown of only about 7.000 people a huge screen was set up for public viewing of the semifinal and final and about 1.500 people attended both events respectively. A much bigger number of people, more than 500.000 Germans followed the finals on a huge screen at Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. Ultimately though, the Germany team could not pull off the tournament victory and lost against Spain, a well deserved Champion.

A highlight of my stay in the Black Forest was again the good food at home. I have many recipes I cooked during my stay to bring back to Florida my friends. You can look forward to some good food and as you know especially some good cakes!

During the last weekend of my stay our whole family was united for the first time in one and a half years as both of my sisters came to visit while I was there. It will be a while for this to happen again, so we enjoyed the time very much. As it turns out though my brother and his family are planning to visit this upcoming December to attend my graduation and spend Christmas with me, and later in March of next year, my older sister and her husband will spend some time in West Palm Beach. Many friends have announced their visit as well. I should probably turn my apartment into a holiday apartment!

June 17-20, 2008 - Off to Heidelberg

2008-07-19T23:36:00.000-07:00

The following Tuesday, I was off to Heidelberg to visit my younger sister Cornelia. Those of you who know Germany might also know that Heidelberg is a beautiful small city between Frankfurt and Freiburg further south. If you were not aware of this fact yet, you will get an impression of the city’s appeal looking at the pictures.

After a 45-minute drive in my brother-in-law’s corvette on the Autobahn, I arrived at Cornelia’s place in the later afternoon. The highest speed we drove the car at was about 150 miles per hour on the two-lane-Autobahn. This is quite a difference to the 70 miles per hour on the multiple and much wider lanes on e.g. I-95 as you can imagine. Overall, during this entire trip, the difference between the roads in the States and Germany affected me more strongly than ever before – The narrow streets in Germany made me pay more attention to the roads driving with others and very cautious when driving myself, more so than during previous visits over the past few years. I guess more than one and a half years made me adapt to the wider US streets completely. That everything is just a whole lot smaller over there, struck me much more this time than before.

Cornelia is living in a very nice University dorm with her own bed and bathroom. Staying with her in the dorm definitely reminded me very much of my college days and also of my current students! It felt like a journey back to the days…

As the weather improved and the sun showed its face more and more over the next few days, we took walks through town, along the river Neckar where people were strolling all along its shores, and up to the famous Heidelberg castle. While Cornelia was at work or at University, I took care of my business and projects for my job, when she was free we took advantage of the free time together. Over the three days we engaged in many conversations about various topics including the US, the upcoming elections, my experience abroad, religion etc. with many of her friends and acquaintances. Whenever we stepped outside the door, many people usually gathered around to chat as they knew the "sister from the States" is here.

Heidelberg is a very international town and those who know me also know that this is ‘my kind of place’. Meeting people from all over the world and especially the US is easy here and so we did. Wednesday night we visited a non-denominational church located right by a US base in town where we met various people from the US, various countries in Africa, the Philipines, and other places in the world. It was a truly multicultural experience and one of the warmest welcomes I have ever received. My sister was in deep awe about this ‘different’ place. Thursday night we ventured out to an Irish Pub to watch the quarterfinals of the European Soccer Championships with Germany playing Portugal. As usual when Cornelia and I go to an Irish Pub in Heidelberg, we ended up in a group of Americans, this time joined by one Italian, who had all come to watch the game there as well. Most of them were Civilians or contractors working for the US army who had fallen in love with the atmosphere around soccer games during the 2006 World Cup in Germany. Jason from Indiana, Gene from Pennsylvania, Algis from LA, and Georgio from Venice, Italy celebrated with us a good German game sending the national team to the semifinals! Among others they learned the song “Deutschland, Deutschland schiess ein Tor, schiess ein Tor, schiess ein Tooooor….”

On Friday then it was time to say goodbye to Heidelberg and Cornelia as my parents came to pick me up. They were also bringing along my five-year-old niece Ellen, who is my Godchild too. As ‘not-yet parents’ my sister and I got a little bit anxious about Ellen climbing up on seemingly dangerous playground stations and the aggressive nature among the kids playing. We were amazed about parents enjoying their afternoon and not caring about what their respective children were doing and how badly their were behaving towards other children … It painted a sad picture about where society is headed in parts. Well, we survived this adventure and got her off the playground safely!

June 12-17, 2008 - Arrival in Frankfurt

2008-07-19T23:21:00.000-07:00

After an 18-hour trip (including layover and travel to Miami airport) I arrived at 8 a.m. on July 12 in Frankfurt where I spent the first few days of my trip at my sister’s Susanne and her husband’s house. We had not seen each other for over one and a half years so it was a nice and long-awaited reunion. With the consulates all located in the Frankfurt area, I used the first few days to take care of all administrative matters right away as well. Hence, right upon my arrival at Frankfurt airport, my sister took me to the Chinese Consulate to obtain my Chinese visa. Thankfully, I did not run into any problems obtaining my visa. I made my sister turn around in the car once as I had left some important documents in the car, but other than that little mishap everything went without further complications. In fact, the personnel at the office proved very friendly and helpful. As I have found out now after my arrival in Beijing this has not been very common for other China visitors. The Chinese government tightened the visa regulations quite a bit around the Olympic Games and most visitors have run into some kind of problems.

My second day in Germany, I was now off to the US consulate where the process to get my first-ever legal work visa for the US (YIPPEA) stamped into my passport went very smoothly too. Take this in: I am finally a legal alien now. What a great title, isn’t it?

One thing testing your patience and trust in God during the whole US visa change process though is that you leave your passport and everything with the authorities and they send it back in the normal mail! In all other matters the US authorities are so concerned about security, but apparently not in this regard. I was scheduled to leave for China about three weeks later, so there was no room for any issues and problems. Needless to say, I was very glad and thankful to find my passport with the visa in my parents’ mailbox two weeks later.

Both days dealing with the consulate issues, speaking
high-German posed the biggest problem, as I had mainly spoken only English in West Palm Beach and Black Forest German with my family over the past two years. This dialect and high German are completely different and I was very happy when the immigration officer at the US consulate switched to English! This made my life a whole lot easier. Why in the world would they suddenly want to speak German to me, that had never happened before!

A few days with my sister and her husband helped my high German come back to me quickly though and when an old college friend of mine came to visit from Hamburg on the following weekend my speech was back to normal or ‘relatively normal’ J. This is how my family and friends would put it. Denglish (German-English mix) is still a pretty normal phenomenon in my German speech.

Being the outgoing person I am, I enjoyed meeting people from all backgrounds during these first few days of my trip already. While I was led to cross paths with Hatice, a very godly Turkish-German-American lady living in Florida whom I hope to stay in touch with upon my return to West Palm, I ran into a man from Iran who had lived in Germany most of his life and got the chance to minister to him sharing life experiences. While waiting for my sister to pick me up one day, I had a lovely conversation with a 85-year old German lady who amazed me as she was on top of EVERYthing going on in the world. On another day sitting in a café I enjoyed a godly conversation with a lady who had just gotten married on the Spanish island of Mallorca and shared about tremendous changes in her life over the past few years. Exchanging no contact information, we agreed to meet again at this café around summer of next year! Then, as we went out to eat at a Persian restaurant on another night, I amazed the Persian waiter as I asked him for his name and further engaged him in conversations. I kept asking him for advice on the food and chatted about other things. Unlike in the US, this is very uncommon in Germany and I could see it written all over his face how surprised he was about this ‘different German’. Different indeed I am.

I had promised my family to bring Florida weather along to Germany, but it arrived with some delay. As you see in the picture of downtown Frankfurt, we had some German weather patterns before the Florida sun caught up with me a few days later. For those of you who have not been in Frankfurt before, it should be explained that parts of Frankfurt are very American which is very apparent in the picture of my friend Katja and I with the beautiful Frankfurt Skyline in the background.

Other parts of Frankfurt meanwhile are very traditionally German, as shown in the picture of the old city around the major's house, the "Roemer".

Introduction

2008-07-19T23:12:00.000-07:00

Most of you know that I have ventured out of country this summer traveling to Germany and China. On the first and only rainy day in Beijing so far, July 14, I finally started typing up my daily notes on this blog and today, July 20, I will start posting it online. I hope you will enjoy this blog about my journey to China sharing my experiences throughout these close to three months of travel. My trip to China to work as a consultant for the 2008 Summer Olympic Games has led me through Germany as I had to take care of important visa paperwork for both China and the US in my home country. I also utilized the trip through Germany to spend time with my family as I do not see them often living thousands of miles away in West Palm Beach.

I will start off with a brief summary of my stay in Germany and will then provide a more detailed description of my experiences in China. I hope my narrative will give you some more insight about life both in Germany and China and that it will also give you at least a small impression of the extraordinary experiences around my travels.