The Wiggen's Travels
Our travels around the world.

The overall experience in china was really impressive. The people were really excited to be hosting the games. Little kids LOVED to run by and say Hi while giggeling while could almost always get a smile from security guards as well. Yes there were army guys every 100 ft, but somehow they seem a little less daunting when they are nice. When they were off duty and in the buses to be driven away, they were smiling and waving to people. They were probably 18-20 year old kids and it was nice to see them excited.

We went to the great wall one day. You can take a tram or walk up (I think the tram is relatively new). We decided to walk and today I am glad I did, at the time I was sweating and working hard as you climb stair after stair to get to the top. Once there however you can reval in your accomplishment and enjoy the wall. Unfortunately for usbthw smog was a little thin so we coils not see long sections of the wall at once but what we saw was quite amazing.

That day we also went to the forbidden city (temple of the rulers for many years ). Another great HUGE set of historic buildings which are great to tour around. Hopefully I’ll get some pics from my real camera up at some point soon.

As for the games, if you didn’t watch the opening ceremonies shame on you. They were impresive. I swear the choryographer was a star the next day. He was on every channel (not sure what they were saying). An interesting side effect of going with Kostas (pilot for mcdonalds) was that our badges read mcdonalds work force. Thus we were able to get onto the Olympic green before anyone else (the guy at the gate probably thought I was a fry maker). Thus we spent the afternoon before opening ceremonies walking around the green amunst the cool buildings and art work. We were literally the only people there (ok maybe there were 1000 workers) on this huge block after block zone for the games. We heard from others that the line to get in was crazy long, buy we managed to miss it all.

One of the bad things about the level of security was they were not allowing people onto the Olympic green unless you had a ticket and thus needed to be there. Again being in charge of frys allowed us access, but there was no vibe outside the venues. Inside was great, but outside lacked a bit. I was expecting large screen tv’s everywhere and talking to people from all over the world (like the world cup in Germany) but we could not find such a place without being at an event. Security rules change there everyday, hopefully they relax that a bit so people can mingle.

The opening ceremony gets a definate A while the rest get good marks for the venues and dollar beer but I would have enjoyed the games a lot more if we were walking aroud a pure global group instead of being restricted to certain areas.