Saturday 16th August 2008 After a long and emotional last few weeks, we finally made it to the big day itself. After waking up early with a million things running through my mind I got up and went to town for my last Primarni fix - well I wont get the chance to go for a year! Racing back, my friend Kathy helped my shove my stuff into my pack, which weighs 19KG and we were ready to go. I said a goodbye to my comfy surroundings and Dan and I made our way to the airport.For those of you that haven't had the chance to go to terminal 5, it's a huge airport, which seems a lot bigger and futuristic to others. No queues, or roped off sections just swift lines of computers ready to hand you your boarding card and take your bags. We said our final goodbyes to Mum and Paul (this was very sad) and headed for immigration.

The journey to Beijing took just under 12 hours but this was helped by OK airplane food, turbulence which kept rocking me to sleep and a touch screen television with a million different films and games on.

Sunday 17th August 2008

We arrived in a rather cool and wet Beijing, grabbing a cab and making our way to the hostel. This was down a long and narrow ally way, which housed hundreds of homes, workrooms and little Chinese shops. The hostel was pretty cool with clean rooms, shared bathrooms and a guest living room with a TV that the Chinese would huddle around to watch their home team secure all of those gold medals shouting 'Chiyo', meaning 'China'. We had to head straight out to collect our tickets from a place downtown, we then had a wonder to check out where the subway stops were and Dan had his 'Subway' fix for the day! We made our way to the Olympic green but only guests with tickets can enter the Olympic Park which means most people can only look at the site for now from a great distance. We then made our way back to the province we were staying in, walking for half an hour to the national train center to grab some rather strange Chinese food, I think it was chicken but you never know! Monday 18th August 2008We were up early heading to the basketball stadium to watch Croatia Vs Iran (who were shockingly bad) and Lithuania Vs Australia. The atmosphere was electrifying and people were screaming when players made a three pointer or a slam-dunk. We spent the afternoon wondering around and then headed to the Basketball Stadium in the evening to watch China Vs USA. Here the air was filled with Chinese chants twined with shouts of familiar songs from the Americans. The USA won the game with two runs to zero.Tuesday 19th August 2008 It took around 4 hours to get around Tiananmen Square; from our perceptions we just thought it was one big square but that was not the case. There are lots of various squares with palaces in between housing beautiful temples, rugs and shrines. Each square is stunning with beautiful and intricate décor. At the end of the square is a peaceful garden with little temples trees, artwork and soothing music, we felt most relaxed when leaving. We then walked down the outside of the square to the subway heading for the birds nest, not the crows nest mum! We had to get three subways from where we were to get there and on the third all visitors to the games have to go through strict security to enable us to enter the Olympic Park. Once inside it was amazing! The birds nest is an incredible piece of architecture and certainly makes an impact. So does the swimming pool, I actually preferred this to the nest! It really does look like a series of bubbles lit up by aqua colours. Watching the athletics was a marvellous experience and was made even more wonderful when GB won the 400m gold and silver in the high jump. Dan and I felt most patriotic, standing in China holding a GB flag, singing our familiar national anthem. We got back to the hostel around 1 a.m. exhausted from shouting and the hustle and bustle of the subways.Wednesday 20th August 2008We headed to the 'People's Republic of China Museum' for a wonder taking in all the images and artifacts, finding it difficult to interpret the text because everything was in Chinese! We had an audio guide but it wasn't much help. In the evening we took a taxi to the other side of Beijing for a few drinks. We arrived at this bright and buzzing lake with hundreds of bars, restaurants and clubs around the outside. At the entrance Chinese families sing, dance, and play keep me ups to the humming sounds of Asian music. We took a walk around watching the basketball finals on a big screen and people watching. Thursday 21st August 2008 Waking up to heavy rain was not appreciated. However, we made the most of our last day in Beijing, heading to a shopping mall to buy fake goods, well what we can carry anyway! We even had to buy fake Olympic T-Shirts because they just weren't selling promo items anywhere! We then heading from the shops to the Lama Temple, similarly walking through sections of temples and shrines with the strong smell of incense following us. We then headed back to the hostel to collect our bags and make our way to the airport. Beijing was an amazing city and we can't wait to go back.