Nike Hospitality, The Pearl Market, and US Women's Basketball

Today started with a bang and ended with one as well.  I headed over to the Nike hospitality area with Jason Vigilante, Leo Manzano's coach, and John Hayes, flag bearer Lopez Lomong's coach.  Jason helped John and I get a visitor's pass into the place as security was pretty tight and right off of the bat I felt out of place.  You don't think of the crazy corporate things that go on behind the scenes, but the Olympics is as corporate as it gets.  To top it all off, I saw some pretty impressive people.  To give you an idea, Hichem El Gourrouj, the world record holder in the 1500, and Sergey Bubka, the world record holder in the pole vault, were the light weights.  Not really, but when the Prince Albert of Freaking Monaco is there, things change.  The place was pretty swank as there were lots of athletes rolling through there to get their complimentary bags of gear and shoes.  Pretty cool.

From there, Jason and I wandered on to the Pearl Market and it was much different than the Silk Market.  Though they are pretty much the same thing, they are at different places and the crowds are considerably less so your bargaining tool is better.  I was able to get tons of gifts for friends and family there so I was really happy with my haul!

We came back to BNU and grabbed some food and hung out for a bit.  Shani had grabbed me some tickets for the US Women's team so I headed off there with Andreas, Muna Lee's personal coach.  We got there at 8:15 when Australia was playing Korea.  If you haven't seen Australia's women's uniforms, then you'll get a pretty good idea from this link:

http://en.beijing2008.cn/news/sports/headlines/basketball/n214530923.shtml

It was quite a site.  Because Shani got us the tickets, they are for the "athletes section" so they were 3rd row right behind one of the goals.  The place was pretty empty but its always neat to see other sports.  We had a few other coaches and administrators from other countries around us so it was good to talk with them.  After the game ended, the teams left the court and then they prepared things for the second game, the US vs Mali.  Can't say that I am too familiar with Mali, and I'm sorry to say that the Malians didn't seem too familiar with basketball.  The final score was 97 - 41.  The game was secondary to what took place during though.  As the players were warming up, we heard a noise from the fans that clearly wasn't for the players.  We looked around and saw Carlos Boozer, Chris Bosh and Dwight Howard headed right to the same section as us.  They were about five or six seats away from us.  I got a great picture of Boozer's and Howard's watches which were totally covered in diamonds.  I'll be sure to put them up later.  

That is all for now.  Shani's family gets in tomorrow and she has a short walk through / warm up at the stadium tomorrow as well so I might not even see her tomorrow.  I might be heading to US women's field hockey tomorrow morning to see some old friends from Wake and BU.  Hope all is well and my thoughts are with the Jones family right now.  I really wish I could be there with you all right now in this difficult time.