Kathleen's last wet Beijing visit

Kathleen
Originally uploaded by sheilaz413.

Topic of the day: Watching Italy vs. France in torrential downpour

For the final game of the World Cup, a whole bunch of us met up at Ritan Park, or the Temple of the Sun Park, to watch the game. Ever since the start of the games, they have been broadcasting the games from the park. The setup was actually pretty cool. In the actual temple of the sun, they have put up two big screen TVs, positioned at an angle from each other. One screen is for all the Chinese viewers, one for all the foreign viewers. Below the stone steps of the alter, chairs, tables, and booths are set up in the open space between the alter and the red temple walls. Pretty cool.

Kathleen was in town for the weekend, her "last" visit to the country's capital before her departure back to Deutchland. After a busy day of watching Lost (I'm certifiably hooked now), eating, visiting the Cleveland Museum's impressionist paintings at the capital museum (which turned out to be very good! They had many fine works from Picasso, Van Gogh, Modigliani, Renoir, Monet, Manet, et al), and watching the Wedding Crashers, we scooped out a good few tables at Ritan and started waiting for the hours before the start of the final game.

And then the rain came. Columns of rain poured from the heavens, leaving us nowhere to run and no where to hide except under the bare shelters of our table's umbrellas. There we stood for an hour while ourselves and our possessions were slowly getting wet and a whole new ocean was forming below our feet (drainage wasn't so good). While waiting for the rain to stop, some people were getting creative. The highlight was a pseudo rain dance from an enthusiastic would-be hippie.

After an hour there, we finally decided that the venue needed to be changed (this came mainly when the satellite service was becoming unstable). The rain by that point still had not stopped and our only option was to dash from our point A to point B. And that was what we did. During a period when the rain wasn't coming down as hard, all 8 of us sprinted from our shelter under the umbrella into the dark abyss. The 5 minutes walk to the gate of the park was the most fun I've had in a long time. At this point, we were all soaked, so we just decided to have fun in the half flooded park, stamping in the water and kicking water to add to the wetness of others. By the time we reached the new bar to watch the game, I was soaked.

P.S. Kathleen and I were on CCTV5 for a brief second (both in the background). Who knew the annoying camera men who were blocking our way was for CCTV5??
P.P.S. Compared to all the other weekends where I have hung out with any of the other SHA crew, this was probably the most productive! Amazing!