Ok, here is the update, sorry for the delay, we went to the great wall today (14th), and it took up most of the day.

Today was great (13th), I had some help finding tickets to some of the Olympic games, and one of those sets included tickets to the Women's Team Finals. If you follow Gymnastics at all you would know that our women's team is quite good this year, and is lead by Shawn Johnson, of Des Moines, IA. China is historically quite good in this category, so having the two teams be close, provided some added excitement.

Since I had to purchase tickets in a pair (unable to find only 1), I invited Dan Holme to come with, and we ended up with really great seats. Here is a picture from our seat. Just to the left of us is the Olympic Family seating, and to the left of that is the Press Boxes, so you can see we have a really good seat, especially to watch the uneven bars.

The girls did quite well, but had a few mistakes on the high beam, and the floor exercise, which ended up costing them about 2 points, allowing for China to take the Gold. I have lots of video from the event, but it's taking a very long time to get these up to YouTube from here. I'll update the blog when I can get the video uploaded.

Here are a few more pictures from the event:

After watching the competition, and award ceremony, I wondered the rest of the OCD (Olympic Common Domain), and found some new places I didn't know about on the north end of the grounds.

Johnson & Johnson, has a great building there, that has spent significant time and money on the Earthquake that hit China, and the Terracotta solders. Here are a few pictures of some of the things inside their building.

These Terracotta solider's are the real thing, which is a very rare thing to find around Beijing, as they are so protected. Johnson & Johnson has a significant investment in protecting them, and only brought 4 of them for display in this building. There is a full story written on a sign in the building, but my pictures were not so good of that, so I'll write it here:

"The warriors you see around you were discovered in 1974, in the city of Xi'an --- 900km northwest of Beijing. Two farmers, looking for a good place to dig a well, began to unearth Terracotta shards near the mausoleum of Emperor Qin Shi Huang.

2000 years earlier, Xi'an was a city like Athens, Cairo, or Rome --- one of civilizations ancient capitals. These warriors are a profoundly important link to those times. Their discovery shocked the archeological world. In fact, Emperor Qin's Terracotta Army is considered one of the most significant discoveries of the 20th Century.

There are many thousands more of these warriors hidden below the earth surrounding the Emperor's grave. They are citizens of a vast subterranean city, most of which remains unexcavated.

But who was Emperor Qin? And why did he create this magnificent army?

Emperor Qin was China's first emperor. All Chinese school children learn that Emperor Qin did three things: Created one unified China out of half dozen warring, feudal states, connected the Great Wall to protect this vast empire, and mandated a common script and common system of measurements so that people throughout the empire could communicate and trade with one another.

In short, Emperor Qin created a civilization."

After finishing up at the Johnson & Johnson building, I went over to the Volkswagen/Audi display, and was pleasantly surprised. This is a special Olympic edition Audi R8, which is by far my favorite sports car. The rest of the display was quite impressive as well, and I caught a full video of the "Show", I'll get it uploaded tonight, if I'm able.

After finishing up drooling over the R8, I went through the big Olympic store to see what was for sale (quite expensive if you ask me).

We wrapped up the day with a quick dinner, and some desert, and I got ready for a big day tomorrow at the Great Wall.

-Chris