Eek, a Week?!

So maybe I wasn't exactly cut out to be a blogger. Or at least not in China, where there are always new things to see and I don't want to be stuck behind a computer. The convergence of great things to blog about and no time to blog about them has hit me hard. So I keep postponing a catch-up blog session, which means I have even more things I want to write about, which means the whole task seems more daunting, which means I put it off longer. But I'm not throwing in the blogging towel, and hey, it's only been a week since my last post--I didn't wait until I was back in the States!

I will offer a few explanations (ok, excuses) for my delinquency.
1) Time moves more quickly in China. I don't know how, but I really think it does. Maybe because every time you want to buy a souvenir, the bargaining exercises take 20 minutes. Maybe because I now think a normal walk from place to place is at least 30 minutes and a normal subway ride is an hour and a half. Anyway, not nearly as many things fit in a day here as I would hope.

2) I still need my beauty rest. China has not changed this about me, and if anything, it has made it more obvious. I really think my body works overtime in the day to protect me from the 90 degree, 90 percent humidity climate; to filter the smog out of my nose, throat, and lungs; to readjust its sense of personal space every time I'm in a public place. A good night's rest feels especially rejuvenating here, and I really need my 8 hours of sleep. Thank goodness I'm not really trying to learn Mandarin, because the exhaustion of that would probably mean I'd need 14 hours of sleep a night!

3) Training and then work started more in earnest. We have been practicing using our computer databases to get athlete, team, sport, and race information. We've had many a session about notetaking, asking good questions, press conference protocol, practice interviews, etc. I even was lucky enough to interview athletes and coaches from Cuba and Honduras in Spanish two days ago during a training session at the Chaoyang Sports Park.

4) The commute to training and work is almost 2 hours each way. I've been spending 4 hours a day on subways and buses--or in line to get on one or the other--about four days a week the past two weeks. And this isn't productive subway time sitting in a seat reading or writing. This is every man or woman for him or herself, watch out for that subway door that's about to hit you. I'm not kidding--the subway scramble is really a race where people run to get any open seat on a train.

5) I've been trying to do lots of touristy things and gift shopping before even more athletes, families, media, and tourists get here. When we arrived a month ago, no one was here for the Olympics yet except for some long-time staff. About a week ago, the tide shifted, and there are noticeably more foreigners every day. And they're going to the same places that we want to go. And I know more are coming! I was taking every day I've had off to go places while they were less crowded. This was key especially at the Olympic merchandise stores which recently I've heard have had hours-long checkout lines. I know during the Games, the crowds will be worse, my commute will get longer (unless miraculously the promised shuttle bus will be scheduled to drive us through the license plate-restricted roads and possibly in the Olympic traffic-only lanes), and I'll be more tired from running and quotetaking at work.

6) Geotagging for Emerson College has been a major undertaking. This is part of my homework for the internship/class that I'm technically registered for in order to be here with Emerson. Problem is that I didn't bring a GPS of my own (sorry Mom and Dad--I know you got me one, but I didn't know about this assignment in advance!) I haven't been using one of the school's loaner units, too.

So I've been "retro-tagging" my photos with latitude and longitude from Google Earth or Google Maps. Thank you, Google Maps, for updating your English-language Beijing map right before the Olympics. When we first got here, I couldn't find the Communication University of China (CUC), where we're staying, on Google maps in English. I could only find it on the Mandarin Google map of Beijing by cutting and pasting the characters from the university's website. Recently, I found that CUC is on the English map (see 39°54'31.51"N, 116°33'0.76"E), and I found out from its labels that there are an elementary school and a separate kindergarten on campus. (I digress, but the professors and their families live on campus, and there are lots of them at this university of 30,000 students, so it makes since there are schools right on campus.)

Still, I've had to search for some things in Mandarin, using addresses from bilingual webpages or Mandarin addresses on thebeijinger.com website. The Beijinger is a travel and culture magazine and website for expats and visitors with lots of food, drink, and shopping reviews. They always give the address in Mandarin for you to show to your cab driver or someone on the street if asking directions, or in my case, to use when searching maps for latitude and longitude.