Jon_Pastuszek's blog

	Team USA, Gold Medal Winners

Yesterday, Team China was eliminated in convincing fashion by Lithuania. Many of the Chinese I have talked to are dissapointed, but know that a loss was inevitable. "We're not very good at basketball. We're good at ping-pong" is a line I have often heard.

The last days of the Olympics are approaching, and that means we are in the medal-rounds. The pressure intensifies, the games get tighter, and everything basically gets more exciting. It's win or go home. Good thing I get to watch every game and blog about it.

Everyone I talk to, Chinese, American, European, boy, girl, kid, adult, cannot stop talking about the United States basketball team.

Yesterday was quite a day. First, the weather was absolutely perfect. After three days of off and on rain, Beijing’s skies cleared up and the air cooled down, providing people with a perfect day.

Not 24 hours after submitting an article stating why the United States was a flawed team, I was served a large platter of crow, cooked medium-rare.

Since the Opening Ceremonies kicked things off on the 8th, the sun has peaked its head out of clouds/pollution one time, briefly. If there’s no pollution in the sky, there’s rainclouds. If there’s no rainclouds, there’s a sheet of pollution. Probably not what the Chinese government had in mind when they shut down all those factories and took  all those cars off the road. Link .

The “Redeem Team” has opened up their gold medal campaign with two blowouts against China and Angola. Those wins could be labeled as a slam-dunk. Here’s some slam-dunks to prove it.

There are two slogans for this year’s Olympics in Beijing. Xin Beijing, xin Au yun, meaning new Beijing, new Olympics and tong yi ge shi jie, tong yi meng xiang, meaning same world, same dream. In Chinese, the two slogans catch the eye because both slogans use dual repeating characters and phrases.

Hello again, from Beijing. Welcome to day two of the blog. The day seemed a little emptier without the comforting glow of roundball on the box, but the prospect of another all-day marathon tomorrow keeps me going. And also the lure of eating a tasty dish of chicken, peanuts and cucumbers, drenched in a sweet sauce on top of a heaping plate of rice keeps me going too. Mmmmmm… Chinese food…