At Starbucks

We slept in today (well, I slept in, OW went for a run in nearby Yuyuantan Park), and then went to a jiaozi (dumpling) place near Chang'An Jie. We are now at the Starbucks across the street, using the free wireless and drinking coffee and machiatto. 

Tonight we will be at the Bird's Nest for the last time this trip to see athletics. There should be a few exciting finals in there, including the men's and women's 4x100 relay, which should feature Usain Bolt of Jamaica. The US teams did not make the final in either of these events after BOTH teams dropped the baton in the semis.

We will also see the women's long jump final, for which we saw the heats on Tuesday. The olympic record in this event is still held by Jackie Joyner-Kersee from the 1988 Seoul olympics, so we are excited to see if this might be broken. We are looking forward to a great performance by Reese of the US, but it will be tough to beat Tatyana Lebedeva of Russia, who is the reigning Olympic and world champion. Finally, we will see the pole vault final, where the world champion Brad Walker of the US again got eliminated in the early rounds. What is it with the US team these days?

I can't believe we are nearing the end of the Olympics here. We have had a great time, and were lucky to have seen so many events. We will stay in Beijing for a few more days after the closing ceremony and are hoping that some of the Olympics paraphernalia will go on sale ;) 

We might go to Wangfujing St. again today to check out the elusive Baleno store and to potentially purchase a China team warmup.