Beijing Olympic Gardens

Well day two was good...

I slept great last night...I really don't think I moved once all night!  These fancy beds/pillows in fancy hotels are amazing! 

Woke up around 7am and went straight to the computer to check my emails.  The first three were from clients coming to the conference my company is hosting here in Beijing...saying they either missed there flights or the flights were cancelled!  Not what I wanted to hear first thing in the morning!  Once that was all taken care of (I am kind of the liaison between our clients and the hotel for this big event), I went for some breakfast at the hotel.  The food here is pretty good.  They have most of the normal American stuff (cereal, toast, yogurt, bacon, etc) plus all the crazy Chinese stuff that I can't even pronounce.  Steered clear of it for this morning. 

I went to the Bank of China across the street today to try and exchange my US dollars for the Chinese Yuan.  I walked in, and of course, everyone just kind of looked at me and didn't speak.  So I saw a little machine that read "exchange" so I pushed the button.  It spit out a piece of paper with a number on it, so I just sat down and waited, hoping that the teller would speak English.  About 10 minutes later, I saw my number flash above one of the tellers (it was announced as well, but in Chinese).  So I went up and told her I wanted to exchange my US dollars (I showed her my huge wad of cash) for Chinese money.  She said "You have passport?" in her broken Chinese/English.  And of course I didn't have it with me.  I shook my head no, and she said, "You no exchange money no passport!" and shooed me away.  Haha…  SO...back to the hotel, get the passport, go back, get another number, and wait again.  This time it is a guy, who really looks just confused when I tell him what I want to do with my $2,500 in $100 US dollar bills I have.  He said, "Exchange US for Chinese??"  I said yes in my best Chinese and nodded my head up and down with a smile.  He typed a number in to his calculator and showed it to me and said "exchange".  It was pretty close to what I thought the rate should be so I said sure.  He took my cash and my passport and I was just praying he was going to give it back with the right amount of money.  Quite some time later (like at least 5 minutes of me freaking out), he finally came back with a HUGE stack of bills.  Roughly 16,500 Yuan – in 100 bills.   So as if I wasn't enough of a target before being tall and light-haired, now I literally have a huge (I mean HUGE) stack of cash in my hand as I walk across the street to the hotel.  Thankfully there are security guards on every single street crossing due to the Olympics, so I was fine. :)

Nothing else too exciting today.  We visited the Beijing Olympic Gardens, which were pretty cool.

We had a welcome cocktail party this evening in the bar at the hotel.  We had about 50 of the clients show up for drinks and crazy appetizers that I didn't touch.  The other roughly 50 clients have either not arrived yet or were too jet lagged to make it down for the event.  I introduced myself to every single person there since I'm kind of the one running this little conference, so it was a night full of me smiling and being nice and professional and answering questions and blah blah blah...while everyone else was just getting drunk!  

It's a little after 10pm here now, so I'm going to bed!  I have a full day tomorrow.  Visiting an orphanage at 8am, and a big company we are invested in in the afternoon, and then a big dinner tomorrow night.

That's all for now!

-TK