Blogging about the olympics

Since I’m here in Beijing to watch the first part of the Olympics, much if what I’ll write in the next few days will be ordered like a blog about the Olympics.
Its been crazy here the last few days seeing the city prepare and hyping this sports event up. There are posters everywhere and just about every commercial on TV has something to do about the games. Everyone seems to be in the spirit and ticket sales are through the roof. There are over 20,000 tickets available on a first-come, first-serve basis for sale tomorrow. I thought about going to get some but yesterday(2 days before), there were already 400 people in line. Today, that lines was easily in the thousands. Since I’m not willing to sleep outside to get some extra tickets, I won’t be getting any extras.
I also went to visit a few parks today and the security has really tightened up since last time. There are security checkpoints everywhere. At every gate, they do a survey check on any stuff you bring into the park. There are a lot more foreign people here as well today and tourism is pretty high. The subway was really crowded as were the buses.

One very disappointing thing today was that the air quality was just awful. It was enough to give me minor sinus trouble. There’s so much dust in the air on these types of days. I really hope they can improve the air quality before the games start or else the athletes are really going to have a fit. Maybe that stopping the factories and blowing the stuff north will actually work.

I’ll be visiting a lot more places the next few days and getting my fill of Chinese food. I look forwards to watching some events in person.