Olympic Lessons

Hopefully many of you watched the Opening Ceremonies of the 2008 Olympic Games on Friday night. Unfortunately we couldn't watch it on our slingbox because NBC decided that they shouldn't broadcast the opening ceremonies live. Bummer for us...or me really because Chris worked until 9 p.m. and isn't all that excited by the Olympics. After some TV issues (not surprising), we were able to watch them live at our friends' house. Fortunately, we had an English channel to watch.

The pageantry was nothing short of incredible, but we really enjoyed seeing how the Chinese culture would come through in the evening's performances. It was very cool to learn more about Chinese history but also very interesting to watch some of the things and think "that is so Chinese." For example, the "cheerleaders" who lined the border of where the athletes gathered after the procession. Did anyone happen to pay attention to them and find them slightly hysterical? None of them could really keep a beat and they kept doing this really funny looking dance. The sheer volume of people, fireworks, etc. was also very Chinese. Not in a bad way at all. But I'm sure you noticed that everything was amazingly over the top. The Chinese call it "Face" the Americans would say "Go big or go home."

Even though the opening ceremonies were awesome, the athlete procession is a little bit like a graduation ceremony. Did anyone notice? The poor countries who came in first. They were just sitting down, taking a nap, trying not to be too bored for the next 2 hours while the rest of the athletes trailed in to the stadium.

All in all, it was a quiet Friday night for us, accompanied by a little bit of education. Here are some of the things that we picked up just from watching the Opening Ceremonies.

• During the procession of athletes, countries entered the stadium in alphabetical order, alphabetically according to the Chinese alphabet that is. I didn't quite catch what it was based on given that the Chinese have a character based language and not really an alphabet, but it explains why it went from Ghana to Argentina (or whatever the order).

• I need to spend more time in Africa & the Caribbean - I started keeping track of how many countries we have never heard of before. Out of 204 countries participating in the Olympic Games this year, we were bound to have a few that we didn't know. Sadly, the list got sort of long: 15+ and then I stopped counting. We worked out that all of the countries that we didn't recognize were in either Africa or the Caribbean. Before living in Hong Kong, I probably would have had the same experience with countries in Asia. You obviously get more familiar with an area of the world when you spend time there. Thus, I need to eventually head to Africa & the Caribbean. Hmmm, maybe for someone's wedding in January?

• The Bartolotta fireworks are no longer the best that I have ever seen. Unless, of course, the Bartolottas were helping the Chinese out on Friday night.