News-Record.com

Greensboro's Caroline Lind, who is competing in the women's eight rowing event for the U.S. in the Olympic Games, is keeping an online diary for the News & Record. In between getting ready to row for the gold - her team is a medal favorite - Lind will send dispatches describing her experiences in Beijing.

Wednesday, July 30

So it’s the third day here in the Shunyi district of Beijing and my roommate is currently at the Great Wall of China. Our coach told us this morning that in conjunction with our afternoon off we had the option of going to see the Great Wall of China. I was one of three girls in my boat that opted not to go. Instead of an adventure to the Great Wall, which I plan on doing later after some important racing, I had a leisurely lunch, got worked on by one of our physical trainers, and now and just relaxing listening to the soundtrack to The Darjeeling Limited my second favorite Wes Anderson movie. My favorite is definitely The Royal Tenenbaums although I must say this soundtrack is awesome.
This morning we had a good practice at the course and things are really starting to pick up. The first couple of days were consumed by rigging, figuring out the mode of transportation, and generally getting into a rhythm. But now other teams are starting to show up at the course and the whole experience is slowly materializing into a reality before me! Today we were out on the course with the Romanian women’s eight. They had a slightly shorter practice than us and when we were coming across the finish line on our last lap our cox Mary Whipple pointed out to us that the entire Romanian women’s eight was situated on the shore at the finish line WATCHING us! I wonder if they liked what they saw?
The cultural landscape is quite engrossing. Although we don’t get to see a whole lot in our short trips to the course and minimal interactions with the staff at the hotel, what I have seen has been interesting. There is lots of biking happening. I am not sure if it is because they have certain streets closed off because of the games or if this is normal but there is a certain paucity of auto traffic, even on these great big wide streets. But there is a whole lane just for bikers and many of the Chinese people biking have baskets carry various good and materials. Some of the bikes that I have noticed are all decked out with fabric seats with tassels and things on them and some are not just bike but sort a cross between a bike and a moped!
On the very first day at the course we were walking from the container that shipped our boats over to the boathouse and we were walking by about 10 Chinese people that looked to be gardeners helping out with the watering of the landscape around the course. I remember being so excited and having just learned the Chinese “hello” - Ni hao - trying to make eye contact with these workers to say “hello” to them. Unfortunately only one of them looked over and I was able to extend my first of many cross cultural greetings. Since then I have become more confident with my Ni Hao’s and have extended this to many other Chinese citizens in my hotel and as I see them around. It’s really nice when in another country to be able to the make the simple offering of a hello to someone in their native language; sadly even if that is the only thing I can competently say. Oh well. I am working on thank you! It’s more difficult than one may think!