The Day Before the End

Tomorrow morning marks the begining of our work. The begining of the end of our little vacation. I am sure we will have some more time off, but nothing like the past two and a half weeks. We are meeting our Venue Manager tomorrow at 1 p.m. It should be about an hour and a half by subway then a 20 minute walk to our venue. We live in the eastern part of Beijing and the cycling venue is way on the western side of Beijing, of course. But I am excited to tour the venue and get an idea of how our work is going to play out for the next five weeks! If we are lucky we will get out uniforms and our work schedule, but I can already tell you that our schedule is not bad at all! The cycling races don't start until day seven of the Games, so the first week will be us at the venue watching the athletes train and getting to know them. After that, there is only ONE day that has two shifts, the other days the races don't start until 4:30, so we will have to be there around maybe 3. Other students have sports that start at 8 a.m., and have to be there AT 6, so they have to get up by 4:30 a.m. to even make it to their venue! So I won't complain about my work schedule.

Today I went shopping, the mall was SO big! I went into this store and the girl who greeted me followed me around the entire time... always two paces behind me. It was annoying. She said something in chinese, and I looked at her like, "I have no idea what you are saying" so she said it again three times. Finally, she goes, "do you speak chinese?" I was like, "Um.. I think you should know the answer to that by now." Only... I really said, "no." I just walked up and down the store about six times (really) and it was about the size of an Old Navy, everytime I touched something she would come up and grab my size and I would have to be like, "no thanks" in chinese. She then would carry the stuff I did want for me, it was just weird, I don't really need to be catered to like that. At one point she looked at her co-worker and made a face like, "Can you believe this guys!" so I just smiled. I wanted to be like, "Look here girl, I didn't ask you to follow me around so don't get a tude!" I did end up buying a shirt. It's just diffrent how they try to help SO much, there is just a line between good help and annoying help. I just want to look on my own and if I need a diffrent size then you can help me. Even when out to dinner, you will have the menu and they will just wait right over your shoulder as you flip through the pages. It just makes you feel rushed, so that's a cultural diffrence. Also, when shopping I feel like they expsect me to spend a lot cause I am a westerner. They say, "oh, this color!" or bring jeans over and are like, "these ones, ok?" and I am like, "dudes, no... I wasn't looking at either of those things, I will buy what I want when I want! So lay off!" Of course I am nicer than that and just say, "no thanks" and smile. Costomer service is just diffrent over here, one of the many diffrences I observe.