mei guo jia you...

(literally, "add gas, america!") - our mantra during the games...

so, i basically loved the olympics. that's all there really is to it. they were aMAzing! kind of strange to watch the opening ceremonies in chinese in a "sip sip bar" at our hotel in hong kong, then see highlights of lots of chinese events for a week, then go to an actual event and see everything in person, then watch them in utah, then watch them in california. i was a world traveler those two weeks, i tell ya. i didn't really see any americans compete (other than our athletics event) until i got back to the good old u. s. of a. i never knew how much i loved bob costas until i spent a week listening to chinese and japanese television announcers.

now for the pictures:

we left our hotel seriously at 6am to make it to our 9am athletics (track and field event) event. apparently, three hours wasn't enough time. the security line alone took an hour and a half. so, we got to our seats just after 10am. we missed the HURDLES...my favorite event (i was a pretty good hurdler in my younger days if i do say so myself). but, we made it just in time to see this: the men's 100m heats.

they're really that fast. seriously. it was hard to get a clear picture!

we also saw the women's 800 meter heats, shotput, hammer throw and high jump (very cool!) we stayed until high jump was over at 2pm. my favorite part about the hammer throw was that they had these sweet little remote controlled cars that the hammer throw balls (hammers?) were placed in and shuttled back to the athletes. awesome.

here we are showing our u.s.a. enthusiasm. (photo credit: julia)here is ryan showing not only his beard, but also our rock-awesome seats. we were on the 28th row!!! our lovely friend upgraded us from tier c to tier a. how cool is that!?
water cube during the day. and no, that sky is not photoshopped. i'm pretty sure beijing hasn't seen a day like this since they invented the factory...but it was sooooo clear. i guess the torrential rain storm the day before...when we were on the great wall...might have had something to do with it?!
i'm a fish...water cube at night...this cool tower thing that lit up all sorts of colors... bird's nest with its biggest fans...we took so many pictures of that thing!
me and ryan near our seats...(photo credit: julia)
bird's nest during the day...i love that photo. man, i'm good! and at night...with the torch...and the moon...nice shooting, ryan!
what an experience. there really aren't words to describe how amazing it was! oh, and julia said i should state on this blog that all these images are copyrighted and are not to be used without permission. so...i just did.