August 8, 2008 – The Great Wall

Yesterday started out like every other again. Breakfast, practice and lunch. Practice was really easy for me because Sayaka decided not to practice. She was going to go to the gym instead. So I did a few exercises with Val… and get this! I was just rolling around doing newaza randori and my shoulder came out. Luckily the trainer here already showed me how to put it back in myself. I’m okay though, for those of you that don’t really know, my shoulders are a constant problem. They’ve dislocated about 4 times now and they slip ALL the time. I can’t get them under control for very long.

I forgot to mention, that before practice started we got to meet former President George Bush. I have pictures It was amazing! He didn’t stay long… maybe 15 minutes. Watched a little judo.

Anyways, after practice we ate lunch in the cafeteria. Then we all met up and went on another trip to the Silk Market. I got some good stuff for cheap. And most of it was for me. haha! (Jeff- I got your shirts… I only got 2 though. They all looked the same or retarded). I was making A LOT of people mad. You have to haggle with the people and I was doing it so much that they got mad!! They would always start out at 1600 yuans (for shoes or a jacket/sweatshirt) and I would ALWAYS start at 100. After about 5 minutes of back and forth-ness… I would buy them for around 110 yuan. That’s about 16 dollars. haha!!!

After a long day at the Silk Market, we came back to the dorms and watched a movie, ate dinner and then I crashed. I was exhausted.

Today, August 8, 2008, we didn’t have judo because today’s the opening ceremonies. The athletes have to be ready to go at either 12 or 4pm (I don’t remember which one) to get ready. So practice was canceled. That meant that we got to go to the Great Wall! There was a bus that took a bunch of us there. It was about an hour and a half bus ride. Once we got there we bought our ticket to get in the area and then had to pay to take a gondola to the actual wall. It was SOOOO hot too. But well worth it all. We walked on the wall for about an hour to another chair lift place. We wanted to take the "chute" down. It was pretty much consisted of sitting on a plastic thing with a lever in between the legs that were the breaks. We went all the way back down on one of those. It was so much fun. I have videos that I will post later.

The trip back to the dorms took us nearly an hour. There was no traffic today! I think it was because of the opening ceremonies. The streets are practically empty. And that leaves me at now… Michael and I are updating our blogs and emailing home. We’ll be going to dinner soon… probably crash early again. I did a lot of walking today. haha!

—I forgot to mention that the draws for the tournament last night. Sayaka drew 2 time Olympic Gold Medalist Ryoko Tani… and 2 time Olympic Silver Medalist, 7 time World Champ.