Best of Beijing, Don and Mel married and pictures of the Beijing Belly

So I'm really kind of sick of traveling at this juncture. However, I just witnessed my boy Don get married to the beautiful Mel. It was a beautiful thang and I was happy to be a part of the whole shindig. I'm currently in the airport on the way back to St. Louis to get my car, I was supposed to be leaving earlier today, but a little girl named Hanna flooded the road and kept me from getting to the airport. Anyway, I think that I'll be wrapping up the blog here soon. I figure there are about 4 more posts coming, which will primarily be pictures. Now I'll wrap up this one with the BEST OF OLYMPICS and what everyone has been waiting for... pictures of the BEIJING BELLY!

Best Moment- Watching Dawn Harper win the 100hurdles!

Worst Moment- Watching the US men and women drop the baton in the 4x100 relay was probably number one, but I mean there were MANY!

Best Fans- The Swedish. I dont know how they did it, but they were able to secure whole sections in the stadium. Also they were all dressed alike and were extremely enthusiastic about what was actually going on on the track. Honorable mention to the Australians.

Worst Fans- The Chinese without a doubt were the worst fans. I will list of what made them terrible fans. They basically don't understand how to watch sporting events.

1. Who tries to start the wave at the beginning of a race? Probably because they think that the stadium itself is more fascinating than what is actually going on, they constantly were attempting to start the "Mexican" wave at the start of races and had to be told to shut up repeatedly.

2. They have a weird obsession with cheering for last place. I don't know what it was, but they would cheer REAL loud for the person bringing up the rear. Imagine the sympathy clap, but possibly louder than cheering for whoever won.

3. How about you NOT stand during exciting things. I don't know maybe the most annoying moment during the Olympics was watching people sit down during world record and olympic record attempts. Again, this was a general trend about not really being all that enthusiastic about what was going on, on the track... oh yeah, UNLESS they were Chinese. And since they weren't paying attention it would be like a delayed "oh yeah, Go Chinese person"

4. The last is a perfect lead in into how much of jerks the Chinese were in general to other fans. The most jerkish thing I heard of was the Chinese booing the Russian fans for cheering for Russia. I mean boo a bad call, boo the fact that you're playing poorly but come on now, for real?

5. Are you seriously leaving? The Chinese loved to leave early, I mean granted it was during the week and maybe they had to work the next day, however you could at least pretend to stay more than an hour. For example one day, the high jump finals was one of the first events and a large group of about 200+ people with REALLY good seats just left as soon as the Chinese woman was done running. Oh yeah, there was a solid 2 hours left to go at the meet.

Best New food- Twar, or chuar (pronounced chew are)... Chicken on a stick or bread on a stick, OUTSTANDING!

Worst Food- The brain of the Peking Duck, I had with lovely Luci. It's ok, it still went down the hatch

Best Restaurant- The Thai-Indian Fusion joint place that Durrell saw a rat run across the room!

Worst Restaurant- There weren't any bad ones... well Hooters was overpriced so I'll say that!

Best touristy thing- Great Wall

Best night out- There were 3, Durrell's Birthday, The night Dawn won and the last night I was in YayJing!

What I'm missing the most- How everything was so cheap and the food was so tasty

What I am not missing- Knowing that what I am breathing is not quickly killing me and people who recognize that smoking is NOT healthy

Best learned new skill- Being able to either pretend like I know what people are saying or being able to pretend like I don't hear people when they are talking to me

And the most important award!

Biggest Fan of my Blog- Erica's mom (who may or may not have known my blog better than I did), followed in closely by the agent of Usain Bolt, Brett Favre, Michael Phelps, Devin Hester and others... Donald F Rodriguez and also Coach Shoe!


THE BEIJING BELLY! (in pictures) Now the men of Beijing did this shirt up stomach tuck when it was hot outside. At an outside market one day, I took it upon myself to take pictures of this great warm weather fashion! Special shout out to the beautiful Ann for posing!