08-08-08

Just like leap day earlier this year and 07-07-07 last year I figured I better take advantage of the date and create a blog entry. As I write this I'm sitting in my parents' living room in Missouri watching the Olympic opening ceremonies.  Although I am partial to Taiwan it's great to see the people of China putting on such an impressive show for the world.  Right now people are walking around what, at first, I thought was a big Chinese lantern but turned out to be either the earth or the moon, or both.  Now Sarah Brightman and a Chinese singer are standing on top of it singing a song.  Sarah Brightman always looks a little crazy. Must be all those years performing for Andrew Lloyd Webber.  She has those really big eyes, that probably don't look bad when you're performing on a broadway stage but up close on tv they're kind of freaky.  

Everytime they start speaking in Chinese it makes me a little homesick for Taiwan.  

They're getting ready for the parade of nations and I'm curious to see if they'll show Chinese Taipei aka TAIWAN!  I'm very proud to be from the USA but I can't help but think how exciting it must be for those nations that really had to make an effort to get to Beijing.  Of course the USA is going to have athletes there, that's just a given.  But for many of these athletes they have to work much harder to get there.  

Now, I'm listening to how they pronounce each country in Chinese.  It's so cool I can catch what they're saying.  It still blows my mind sometimes that I speak Chinese.  Oh man, Matt Lauer was talking too loud for me to hear how you say "Turkmenistan" in Chinese.   

Yay!!  Taiwan is walking in!!  I'm so proud!  Although it's a little sad that they can't use their own flag or their real name.  But I bet those athletes are just excited to be there no matter what name they have to use.  Matt Lauer says that there will be a big rivalry between Taiwan and China's Table Tennis teams so I'll have to watch out for that.  

Just FYI for all of you who don't actually live in Taiwan this is the national flag:

This is the flag that they compete under as Chinese Taipei in the Olympics.  After looking it up on Wikipedia I guess the original issue was that the government of Taiwan in the '70's and 80's wanted to use the name "Republic of China" and the "People's Republic of China" didn't like that.  China wanted Taiwan to be known as "Taiwan, China" which was obviously rejected. "Taiwan" and "Formosa" were also rejected because the government of Taiwan at the time still considered themselves the official government of China and using the name "Taiwan" would say they considered themselves a separate nation, so... they chose "Chinese Taipei" as a somewhat politically neutral name. They accept the fact that they are a Chinese culture but reject the idea that they are subordinate to China. But that's just in English.  Apparently when you translate it into Chinese it opens up a whole new can of worms.  If you'd like to read more about it here's the link to the Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Taipei

And on a completely unrelated topic, 08-08-08 will also be remembered as the day I got a bee in my swimming shorts on the way home from the pool.  Yes, it hurt.  But it could have been much worse. Thankfully it was just a little bee. Although, I'm not sure little bee stings hurt less than big bee stings.  That will be one experiment I hopefully won't be taking part in.  I'm just glad I'm not allergic.  Bee sting to the backside would be an embarrassing way to die.  Now that we've had a little "TMI" I think it's time to end this post.  Enjoy the olympics, and don't forget to cheer for the Chinese Taipei table tennis team!  Unless you really like the USA table tennis team, then you can cheer for them.  I won't hold it against you.  

oh cool, Liechtenstein just walked in!  I thought that was a fictional country made up for the movie, "A Knight's Tale".  Guess not...