Matt and Ashley Faus

The past 10 days have been a whirlwind of incredible events, and now it’s time to head back home.  China was a lot of fun, but traveling this much is always very tiring.  We filled our last day, yesterday, up to the brim.  We started off the morning attempting to find our way to the handball stadium.  We knew generally where it was, but with the park so closed off due to security it took us nearly 1.5 hours to walk from the hotel to the stadium.  Handball is an interesting sport.  It’s a mix between basketball and hockey.

After lunch, we went to go watch Water Polo while the girls went to Synchronized swimming.  I had never watched any water sports before, so it was really cool to see something like that.  It was also fun because it was USA versus Germany.  We got to wave our flags and chant USA USA!  And, of course, the USA won, but it was a fairly close game.

After walking another 1.5 hours, picking our way through the hordes of people, we made it to the Bird’s Nest for the track and field events we had tickets for.  We saw the USA sweep first, second, and third in men’s 400m!  One guy was racing in sunglasses.  We also saw the USA take gold in women’s discus throw.  All during this time, men’s long jump was going on.  The long jumpers really enjoyed getting the entire stadium to clap in rhythm, but it was funny because as they were doing it the 200m runners could not hear the starting pistol!  The announcer had to ask the stadium to be quiet, haha!

The coolest thing of the night, and the perfect way to end an Olympic Vacation, was watching the women’s pole vault competition.  In pole vaulting, they set the bar at a certain height, and then all of the vaulters get 3 tries to clear it.  If you can clear it, you advance to the next round, if not, you are knocked out of the competition.  The final round came down to an American lady and a Russian lady.  Then, the American used all of her attempts and was eliminated.  The Russian had already taken gold, but she wanted to keep going (she was allowed three attempts at each height, anyway)!  She rose the bar to 5.05m (16.57 feet) and let fly with the first attempt.  Failure!  The second attempt… the same.  Then, she hunkered down for her third attempt.  After chalking up her hands, spraying some adhesive on her pole, and rousing the 90,000 spectators into a deafening cheer she sprinted forward.  The pole caught the hook, her legs came up, she spun around and let go of the pole, and CLEARED the height!  The entire stadium, representing nations from across the globe, erupted into a furious cheer of happiness and excitement.  The entire earth, brought together to celebrate the pinnacle of pole vaulting competition.  No woman had ever cleared 5.05m before, and now we had all witnessed it.  It was a truly incredible end to a mind-blowing expedition.

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