And it begins!

Today was the first official day of the tournament, with the women's qualifying rounds beginning at 10 a.m.! My job for the day was to be stationed in the media center, assisting reporters who only spoke English and helping them to get to the appropriate places for matches and press conferences. Since it was only the early rounds of the tournament, with no marquee players playing actual matches, there weren't many foreign reporters present. Therefore, I had a lot of free time to wander around and watch tennis.

I was able to watch Melanie Oudin's match against Alexa Glatch, another American. Glatch ended up winning the match, eliminating Oudin from the tournament, which was a big disappointment; Oudin has yet to live up to her performance in the U.S. Open. I also had time to take a tour of the promotions area of the venue, which is absolutely awesome. There is a huge variety of different sponsors, from Kappa to Rolex to food places like Papa John's. From an advertising student standpoint, it was really interesting to observe. I am really excited for early next week when we get a little bit deeper into the tournament because it will be so much more crowded and busy.

We headed to Hou Hai around 7:30 to explore and eat dinner- it is such an enormous place that it would take years to find every great restaurant and shop. We came across a huge restaurant, with outdoor seating, a main floor, and an upstairs deck. The eleven of us got our own private area upstairs which was so much fun. The menu was limitless- there were so many different things to choose from that we all decided to order something and share all of it. We had plates upon plates of food- pork, beef, tofu, duck, shrimp, rice, vegetables, noodles, fruits...and yes, we ordered a turtle. Only Matt and Jim were brave enough to try it; they concluded that it was just okay, so I think I'm happy with my decision of just taking pictures instead of eating it. All of the workers at the restaurant were imp ressed by how much food we were able to con sume; it had been a long day of work :)

After dinner, about half of us decided to head home, and a few people stayed behind to shop and go to the bars. After staying out really late last night and spending all day in the hot sun watching tennis, I was ready to call it a night. On our way towards the street, we ran across a Sunberry (if you've ever been to Pink Berry or Red Mango you know what I'm talking about). Red Mango is pretty much my favorite ice cream in the entire world and I was beyond excited to run across one in Beijing! We also spent a few minutes standing in front of a gorgeous teashop where a Chinese woman was playing the harp. Our attempts

to go home early were thrown off a little bit by all of the wonderful distractions.

Our cab ride back to the hotel was for sure the most entertaining one of my life. Our driver successfully pulled off a U-turn in the middle of driving down the street, nearly causing about a million accidents with other cars and bikers. Since we were all audibly nervous, our driver yelled out loud in a Chinese accent "CRAZY DRIVER" and swerved in and out of other cars all the way back to our hotel in attempts to entertain us. It was one of the funniest but terrifying car rides of my life.

Just another successful day in Beijing!