An invitation to have drinks with the BBC? Sure.

I apologize for being so flighty in my Blogging lately! I have been working every day and having very little time or energy at the end of the day. I spent the past week at the Capital Gymnasium doing flash quoting for men's and women's volleyball. My supervisors were Joy and Emma (Chinese and Italian, respectively), and I love them. I did a lot of interviewing, writing, and running to press conferences. I kept asking questions during the press conferences (ONS reporters are usually silent, apparently), and Emma giggled at me. She's a pretty tough Italian woman, and I thought she was laughing at me. I was kind of offended, but yesterday (which was my last day at the venue), she was talking to me about how much she wanted me to stay. She said that she was very impressed by the questions I was asking in the press conferences, and she said she had to chuckle to herself because of how "ballsy" it was to speak up so much. I got some good quotes from it, and I didn't realize it was gutsy, so it was really nice to get some good feedback.

I started at the Bird's Nest today, which was crazy. To see the stadium packed with people and full of athletes was really neat. There are two sections that we cover: the mixed zone (which is inside the stadium, away from the field of play, and dominated by print journalists), and the broadcast mixed zone (which is right off the field of play, still outside, and solely broadcast journalists). I ended up spending today in the broadcast mixed zone, meaning that I hopped around to anyone who was speaking English, and squeezed in behind the reporter to scribble down quotes. I spent time with NBC, the BBC, and EuroSport. I was so amazed by how friendly everyone was! I was joking around with the BBC a lot ("Let's all just split a bottle of wine and make this day go by a bit faster!") and ended up making friends with the Italian station next to us, though they didn't speak English and I clearly don't speak Italian. It was cool, and I was busy all day. The weather wasn't as brutal as I was anticipating it to be, which made being outside all day pretty bearable. I saw every track and field event today (qualifying rounds), and saw all of the athletes really close up. Tyson Gay was maybe two feet from me at one point. Amazing.

Anyway, I was up this morning at 5:00 and I'm doing it again tomorrow (after that, I'm on the evening shift, so I won't be getting home until 2:00 a.m.), so I'm going to go take a little nap! We celebrated our first day of legit work at the Bird's Nest with a trip to American Cafe (burger! milkshake!) so I am now full and sleepy. Best combination for a nap!

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