Wrestling Blogs - Ben Askren

8:30am China Time ????? Central standard time

So here I am sitting in an internet cafe before we have our first practice of the day. Being overseas does something strange to me, I am always able to wake up early. In the states I can never get up before 10am and be happy about it. But on the Russia trip I was up at 6am everyday and likewise I woke up at 6:30am today and felt good. The trip went very smoothly due to the fact that I can sleep well on planes, I slept almost 7 or the 11.5 hours on the plane here. Goign through the airport was such a breeze because they had everything set up and gave us a police escort.But that isnt to say the day was void of problems, Max, Ryan and Mike Z all missed their connector flight bc it was late out of chicago. They had to get on another flight that went through Shanghai and landed late last night. I still haven't seen them yet but I heard they made it into Beijing normal ok. Beijing Normal is an university that the American team rented out and turned into a training center called the high performance center. That is where we are headed in a few minutes. On the plane I was sitting next to two guys from Hartland, Wi my home town, talk about a small world, Hartland only has 5000 people. They said it was their 15th olympics.

So we landed at 2 oclock and got streamlined through the airport, but once we made it to the village everything got a little more hectic. We had to wait a while to get our keys, then the walk to the room was a ways, a few of the guys on the team worked up a sweat. We unpacked and headed to the dining hall bc everyone was starving. The dining hall was absolutely ginormus, probably the length of two football fields. It was awesome seeing all of the athletes from different countries, everybody wears their gear. It is also cool to hear some of the other athletes talking about FLO, I have already heard swimmers talking abotu floswimming and runners talking about flowrestling. Then were in a hurry and missed a shuttle to Beijing normal, we were all running through the village I am sure it was hilarious watching all of us booking it. So we decided to work out here instead, so we put onthe shoes and hand fought and drilled on the pavement outside the workout facility in the village. Needless to say many other athletes were staring, I think we made quite the impression the first day between that and running around the village lost, LOL. Then last night I got to wonder around Beijing with my GF who I havent't seen all summer. It was kind of weird being such a minority, there were so many people staring at the white people. None of the cab drivers spoke english either so it wa sa challenge getting home. I really hate not being able to communicate with other people, it frustrates me thouroughly. Well I am going to workout now, so hasta luego.