From Aug. 9th to Aug.  15th was the judo competition.  Most of these days were spent doing the same thing each day.  I would wake up in the morning and go running with Annie and Marti for about 30 mins.  Then I would run a staircase by myself for about 15 mins.  After a shower I went to breakfast, then looked on the Internet and checked my e-mail.  At 11:00 or 11:30 we would catch a taxicab to the tournament site.  The tournament venue was nice.  My biggest complaint was that some of the seats did not have backrest and there was not any real food at the venue.  The seats higher up did not have backrest so sitting in them was hard on your back.  They would not let spectators bring in food or water.  The only food they sold was junk food like chips, oreos, and ritz crackers.  To get into the venue you had to go through a security checkpoint.  The preliminaries started at noon everyday and the finals started at 6:00 pm.  The preliminaries usually lasted until 4:30 pm.  The finals lasted about an hour and a half.  Between preliminaries and finals we usually walked 15 mins to McDonalds to get something to eat since there was nothing to eat at the venue.  One day when we walked to McDonalds it was raining extremely hard.  It rained hard for about an hour.  We were hungry so we made the walk anyways.  Lucky the tournament site was prepared for the rain and offered rain ponchos to everyone.  Even with the ponchos we still got wet but it was only the bottoms of our pants and our shoes.  The judo was awesome to watch.  It seemed like every weight class had major upsets.  It is fun to watch people you have never heard of have a good day and beat the top guys in the division.  It really reinforces that at this level of competition everyone has a chance to win.  It does not matter what your resume looks like it, you are never guaranteed a win, you have to work for it every time.  I got to watch Ronda Rousey become the first woman to medal from the USA at the Olympics since it became an official woman’s event in 1992.  She earned a bronze medal with 5 wins and 1 golden score loss in the quarterfinals.  The atmosphere of the tournament was exciting.  Every session of judo the stands were mostly full.  Many of the fans cheering for their countries sat in groups, dressed the same, and cheered loudly together.  Some of them even had songs/cheers for the individual players from their country.  Some of the well-organized countries were China, Japan, Korea, France, Nederland, and Brazil.  Almost everyday at the tournament we ended up sitting next to a different group of people from the USA that was watching Judo for the first time and did not know what was going on. So we had to explain to them what was going on.  Many of them were just at the Olympics to watch and got tickets to watch judo to see what it was. We told all of them to go back to the US and start judo some where.

On the 9th after the tournament I got the chance to go out and try some real Chinese food.  David Matsumoto took Asanuma, Sayaka, Annie, and me out to eat.  The food we had was delicious.  I do not think I have had real Chinese food before, only the American Chinese food version.  I did not see my favorite Chinese food meal on the menu, which is mandarin chicken and fried rice.  I am not sure what I was eating but it was awesome.

The last two days I was in Beijing I was not feeling well.  My stomach was hurting a little bit and I had diarrhea.  Even though I was not feeling well I still had a good time.  On the 14th and 15th I did not watch the finals of the judo tournaments.  Instead on the 14th I went to find a store to buy Olympic merchandise.  We found a place on the Internet that sold merchandise, but when we got there they did not sell every much.  But the good thing about it was the store was at a place called the fashion market.  It is like the silk market but less shoppers and nicer salespeople.  We ended up shopping there for about an hour and a half.  It also turned out that we were close to the Bank of America Hometown Hopefuls venue and the US House.  This is where athletes can invite their family and friends to eat for free, receive free gifts like tickets to events, and shop for exclusive USA Olympic merchandise.  Sayaka Matsumoto was with us so we went and ate dinner at the Hometown Hopeful place.  After getting our guest pass to the place there was a map of the USA with pushpins to mark where you where from.  There was only one pin placed in Idaho and it was in Stanley, ID.  Fruitland was not labeled on the map, but Payette and Weiser were so I placed it just below Payette. The dinner we had was great.   After dinner we were able to get tickets to a field hockey game the next day at 6:30pm.  We also found out the tickets would get us into the Olympic Green area where there was an Olympic merchandise Super Store.  We then left Hometown Hopefuls and headed over to the US House shopping store.  They had a lot of nice stuff there.  Some of it was really expensive.  The Ralph Lauren stuff was super expensive but the Nike stuff was not bad.  I did not purchase any thing there because we were planning on coming back after we went to the Olympic Super Store on the 15th.  On the 15th after the preliminaries of judo we head back to the silk market to do a little more shopping.  The traffic was really bad since it was Friday and took us a long time to get there.  Since we got there late we didn’t get to shop much and had to leave to go to the field hockey game.  The traffic was terrible and we did not get to the Olympic Green area until 7:30 pm an hour late for the game.  Then it took us an hour just to figure out how to get into the Olympic Green area.  There are only a couple of ways to get into the Olympic Green area and it took us awhile to figure that out.  So by the time we got in it was 8:30 and the game was over.  Even though we missed the game it was totally worth the hassle just to get into the Olympic Green.  We spent an hour walking around taking pictures over the different venues like the Birds Nest and the Aquatics Center.  They are really neat buildings.  We got to the Olympic Super Store at 9:30 pm and it closed at 10:00 pm.  The store had a lot of stuff, but I did not have much time to look around.  I had a lot of gifts to get in a short amount of time.  I wish I had more time to shop.  After the super store we went back to the US House to do some more shopping.  I bought a few things there then we went up stairs in the US House to visit with members of the USA judo team.  After visiting for a while we headed back to BNU.  We got there at 1:30 am, and then I packed my bags to come back home.  The next morning at noon we flew back home.

I am back home now getting adjusted to the time and clear skies.  I had an unforgettable time in Beijing.  This experience has given me a lot of motivation to continue to work hard to make it to London in 2012.  I would like to thank everyone who is reading this and everyone who has helped me along the way.  I know this opportunity and the other things I have achieved in life would not have happened without the support and help of the people around.  Again thank you for all you help!!!

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