Wet the Palate

So since i am in China, i am still waiting for the professional pictures. But here are a couple of pictures to "wet your palate". Also, i want to describe how big of an event this was, but i dont think you guys will be able to grasp the superb magnitude of the event without pictures.

So this week i am working 6 days and then a team arrives from the states on saturday night which i will be hanging out with them all night on saturday and all day on sunday and then back to work on Monday through thursday and luckily, my yearly cold decided to start yesterday.....so i am resting for now.

only in China!!!

So I think everyone remembers the open ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics, but what people don’t readily know is the opening ceremonies have long been a big tradition in China. Everything has an opening ceremony. Our soccer leagues have opening ceremonies. And these are leagues that are played every year at the same time. So we had the pleasure of sitting though an extravagant opening ceremony before our Wenshan Soccer game started. I will post pictures probably on Sunday as we had a professional photographer taking pictures, but I don’t get the pictures until Saturday. I mostly took video of the event. So we arrived at really nice tea house and sat down, but no tea was presented. All of the sudden soccer balls were being passed around for us to sign. We signed about twenty soccer balls in which we kicked out to the crowd. So we went from there to the soccer stadium at around 6:30pm. Notice I put the time. So we enter the stadium and there are camera crews setting up. We totally underestimated how big this event was, but we went down and put on our Brazilian uniforms (not my choice) and proceeded to take the field for a nice warm up. And you know what, it was the best warm up I had ever had in China. Usually, we just sort of kick the ball around and pass a little and stretch at your own accord, but we did drills and movement stretching and I felt warm and great and ready to play. Well, the game was supposed to start at 7:30. We warmed up for 45 minutes, and then we sat for an hour. Yup, you guessed it….OPENING CEREMONIES!!! Now, I am not saying that I didn’t enjoy it, but only in China. So they started at 7:40pm. We went over and sat down on the bench. Now, there were about five presentations going on at once during the first 30-40 minutes. There was a dragon show, motorcycle jumping, children practicing karate, the bicycle club, and kung fu presentation with swords and sticks and flips etc…. So after those were done. About 50-60 old people lined up on the field in their nice Tai Chi outfits to perform Tai Chi. Now, during this we are signing shirts and notebooks cause everyone wanted our autograph. WE WERE CELEBRITIES!!! So after the Tai Chi, then an adult martial arts presentation with swords went out on the field. It was pretty awesome. Well, apparently it was our turn to do a presentation. I bet you never would have thought that we were going to do a samba. Now, samba is brazilian, I think. But the problem was that they Brazilians that knew how do perform the samba were playing drums and singing. So that left me, and some Americans, and some French, and a Spaniard to perform the samba. WE DIDN’T. We just sort of moved back and forth and clapped. It was by far the most pathetic performance of the night. So we figured that it was time to start the game…….HAHAHAHAH, ya right! We hadn’t seen the local village dance yet. And then guess what was next…..Finally, the soccer game. Next post will be the game and after the game…..

PS. I took video of the events and not many pictures....that is why i am waiting for the professional photographs photos. 

Wenshan

So we left at 6:30 in the morning and took a "nice" back road down to wenshan. Luckily, we were in a medium size bus, but the seating still was setup for Chinese. So my leg room was none because I got to sit in the back so I was able to sit across two seats with my legs propped up on the second. Needless to say, I didn't get much sleep on the 6 hour trip down there. Well, let me tell you something. It was a much bigger event then what we thought it was going to be. We arrive to people waiting for us and then we immediately ate lunch. Traditional Chinese spread with rice. From there we went to our hotel which was at least a 4 star. I was happy. All the guys thought that we were going to just be playing on a field because i don't know why. Well, we played in a stadium that sat 15000 but there were only about 8000 people who came to watch. So we went and walked around the stadium because it was right next to our hotel. And there were signs everywhere advertising for the game. We started walking around and people were coming up to us to ask for our pictures to be taken. Now, Kunming has enough foreigners in town that it never happens here but wenshan was remote enough (only 390,000 people living there, small for china) that it is still a little untapped by the white people. It was really weird. Later we found out that we were celebrities. Next post wil be about the opening ceremonies and the game with some pictures.

Wenshan was a great time!!!!

I had an awesome time in Wenshan......I will be posting all this week about it with pics to follow also. I had the scariest car ride back from enhancing that I have had in my life!!!!!!! Not even remotely joking.

Sssssoooo more info

I am happy to see that I have over 2000 views on my blog. I makes me think of all the support I have back in the states. On Thursday, I am traveling to wenshan which is south of Kunming to participate in a fundraiser for the village kids to help raise money for there school supplies. We are going to play in two soccer games and then hang out with the kids. We are selling tickets to the games tomraisemthe money. I leave on Thursday and the get back sometime on Saturday. I hope it is a promising weekend. The summer camps are looking really good. We have had interest by lots of parents so I am getting even more excited about them. I started my summer schedule so I teach ever day and I work 9-5 so it is like I am back to a real work schedule. We are going to have a meeting at the end of this month to talk about starting character clubs at the end of August ormealrynseptember. The schools that I work at is really interested in hosting them. Well, I don't want to overwhelm you with info so bye.