Some random notes- mostly about the Haze

-First of all, we got to see the women's AA final in person, which was definitely the best meet we've seen so far. The energy in the arena was at a peak, and we went down to the lower bowl with a large USA contingent (including Shawn's parents, Mary Lou, etc...) so we were able to roar and cheer as loud as we could for Shawn and Nastia. It was awesome to finally hear the USA national anthem for a change and see our USA girls stand 1 and 2 on the podium. The meet itself was great, none of the big players really missed, and it really came down to the final event. I have a new respect for Nastia and her ability to focus and hit a beam set (and floor set) with that kind of pressure, and to see her during the medal ceremony, you could tell that she was just overwhelmed with emotion at downright earning the title of Olympic Champion.

-last week I wrote about how nice it was that you had to have a ticket to enter the Olympic area, because it reduced the crowds and lines. Well, now that track and field has started, that means another 90,000 people are entering the area each day, so that's completely out the window. McDonald's and the Olympic store have to have crowd control, where the workers physically barricade the entrance from swarms of people until the area inside clears out a bit.

-A few days ago it rained pretty heavily, which must've pulled all of the haze/ dirt out of the air. The difference is unbelievable. Look at these two photos of the Olympic torch, first from a hazy day, then again yesterday after the women's AA final (same distance from the torch, same settings on the camera basically):

The sky was like this the first 9 days:


Now it's like this:

-Since it had finally cleared up, we picked an awesome day yesterday to climb the hill of Jinshang Park. The entrance fee was about thirty cents and we had an awesome view from a very interesting pagoda perched on top of a hill:



-I didn't realize until yesterday that there are mountains around Beijing, because I've never been able to see far enough into the distance to see them: