Today was our last day at work and I’m really sad that it’s all over. Before work we all got together at a nice Chinese restaurant near our venue for an early lunch at 11:30am so that we could have our ‘last supper’ and once more chance to hang out.
The food was great and so was the company, but by the time we finished it was only 1pm and we still had another few hours before we needed to be at work. So being girls, we decided we’d go to the Wudakong area (near Lush) and have a look around. I found a nice jumper for when I get back home and a cute dress, and it was interesting just looking in a shopping centre for the first time. Some of the clothes are cheaper, but a lot are the same price as at home and all luggage space is precious, so you’ve got to be picky!
When we’d had enough (and also spent a while chatting to two groups of other Newcastle students we’d run into) we finally decided to go to work and watch the rest of the B group in the Men’s +105kg category. We got to see Damon Kelly (AUS) come third in his group which was a pretty big achievement. There was a whole Aussie contingent there to cheer him on too, yelling out as only Aussies seem to do. They started up the chant “DAMO, JIA YOU” which I found rather amusing.
Also, Steve Waugh and John Eales were in the crowd and I took a sneaky stalker shot just to prove it! Peggy (one of our Chinese reporters) asked me if they were big stars in Australia, to which I replied they are sporting legends, so yes.
When the Superheavy weight A group finally came out it was an amazing match between the German Mattias Steiner, the Russian Evgey Chigishev and the Latvian Viktors Scerbatis. But in what can only be called a feat of human strength and endeavour, Mattias Steiner won the competition by lifting 15kg more than his only successful attempt in the Clean and Jerk to go for Gold – and he won it. What was really both touching and sad was that his wife died in a car accident last year and he had her picture with him during the medal ceremony. It was a very emotional ending to the competition.
After all the work was done though, we came to the realisation that this was the end and that we weren’t going to see some of these people ever again. We took a whole heap of photos out in the Field of Play before we said goodbye to Robert and Dennis.
The rest of the gang went to KTV near Peking University for a bit of a sing-a-long before bedtime. Xu Yang Yang also said goodbye here, and it was so sad to see him go as he was sweetest guy there (he is going to America for six years to study). When we got to our gigantic karaoke room it was really nice just to hang out with them all before we had to go. We found it funny seeing them sing, and they found it funny watching us sing. Peggy was the star of the night, and Wang and Jane did a really beautiful duet in Mandarin. But we were all tired, so after a never-ending version of Beijing Huan Jing Ni (Beijing Welcomes You) we decided it was time to go home.
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