Beijing, China

The chef cutting our Peking Duck.
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I made it to Beijing with all my belongings. Our hotel is very nice and clean. No single rooms but I'm rooming with Brittany who is from Dewitt. She's cool and I hang out with her and a few other girls mainly. The city is VERY different from Tokyo. Tokyo was more of what I think of a city should be which is one high-rise building after another. However, Beijing is more spread out. The buildings have more lawn space and walkways up to their buildings. Which is nice because it's much more open. My only complaint is that it's very dirty here. After a walking around all day your feet are covered in dirt. I knew it was smart to bring those close toed shoes, although my feet still get dirty. People stare at our group A LOT. Literally they turn there heads to watch us pass them. I mean it's fine, we do stand out because we're a group of 16 foreigners, but we're just not used to it coming from the states. Beijing is interesting. I think I took a lot more interest in Tokyo because I wanted to learn about Japanese culture since I'm half Japanese, but I still want to learn about Chinese traditions and culture. Last night was the best night of the entire trip. Locals gather in an open area on the side of the street to dance at night. Around 9 p.m. we were walking back from dinner (where I had Peking duck, not bad but i like it fried rather than just plain), and we saw people ballroom dancing, kicking this badmitten birdie thing, and others playing checkers. It was awesome. I kicked around the birdie thing for awhile, it was nice my soccer skills came into play. Then the ballroom dancing stopped and this man and woman started teaching line dancing to techno music. Our whole group got into this. We stayed for about and hour and had such a good time. We couldn't tell if the locals we're upset with us taking over their dance floor or just interested in watching us. It was not only great to participate but interesting to just watch the locals ballroom dance. It was so cute to watch older couples dance on such a beautiful night.

Me at Microsoft!
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The agency visits are interesting. We've visited Johnson & Johnson (which is an olympic sponsor), Microsoft, iFensi.com, and 56.com We have been learning a lot about UGA and UGM which is User Generated Advertisements and User Generated Media. 56.com is like YouTube and iFensi.com is similar to TMZ or PerezHilton although they have a better relationship with celebrities. Microsoft is a supplier sponsor of the Olympics so they showed us a few UGA ads and I guessed on the money how much one cost and how long it took to make. (500K and 6 months for an ad made by microsoft). I won a mouse for my computer! Which is helpful cuz I didn't bring mine. Tonight we went to a Chinese Opera. It was very different. They had awesome clothing and make-up. Their clothes were bright and long with lots of tassels. Their make-up covered their entire face and had lots of patterns. The best was that they did a lot of acrobatics. I think it was a bit different then real traditional Chinese Operas but it was still amazing.