Wrestling Blogs - Mike Tamillow

I got here at 3 P.M. That's Beijing time. It's thirteen hours ahead of us and the flight was 13 hours. So I landed a day and 2 hours ahead of when I took off. When we landed I followed everyone. It was confusing - there were a few security checks, the baggage claim, and then I was all by myself to figure it out. I played the clueless foreigner. I asked people for help, kept my words to a minimum and pointed to names and pictures. It made it even more confusing that the only language I speak is english and I'm trying to meet up with a team that speaks spanish in a country that speaks chinese. Ahhh the beauty of language barriers. I kept pointing to a sheet that had the hotel name on it, no address though. No one knew where my hotel was. I asked the hotel reservation desk and then the guys with blue beijing 2008 shirts on. They are all over the airport and all over the city as well. One told me to go downstairs for a shuttle to my hotel, but he still didn't know where my hotel was, and my sheet is all written in spanish so I can't even read it to them. So I head downstairs and see another little guy, his name is Tan, about high school age, who also wants to help. I show him my sheet and he says we should go to the information desk. I agree. I already started thinking 'what if I take the wrong shuttle and end up in the wrong end of the Beijing.' But Tan was good, he didn't let that happen. He stayed with me for a half hour. First we went to the information desk, then I got ahold of Larry and he called the lady from team Mexico at the hotel. She gave Larry the address of the hotel, it's Zhengezhquanj (don't ask me...?) and a phone number, which was very useful. I asked Tan if he could call the phone number and talk to them for me then take me to a taxi that could help. He wrote down the address of the hotel in... whatever their writing is and took me out to a cab. He explained to the cabbie where to take me. On my way to the cabbie I thought 'Jeez, this kid deserves a tip for this type of service' so I think 'what's fair?' Well 100 yaun seemed fair to me - i mean he stayed with me on for a long time, made a call I needed done and helped me out a lot. I could be dead on a street corner if it wasn't for him. 100 Yuan is about $14. He wouldn't accept my tip though. I tried to explain it's money. I guess he didn't like money.