What Day Is It?

So I'm here. Our flight got in at 2 pm China-time (or whatever it's called) 2 am your time, my lovely ESTers. The flight was BOOOOOOORING.

Before we got on the plane, I had a little conversation with a javelin thrower from Paraguay. He was with his delegation in the airport sitting near my all-Black group (Sidebar: If CNN can do Black in America, then I certainly can do Black in Beijing). So I went to say hi to him and his crew---in Spanish, of course. We made small little chit chats in English, Spanish, and a little Japanese (Victor, the Olympian, confuses China with Japan.) I told him my name and he kept saying it! with a particular stress on the y, like my name was made for his language: Kyyyyyyyla, Kyyyyyyla. On the plane he winked at me and also pinched my tush. Okay, I made that last part up.

Somehow, our initial group is 100% bona fide Negro. With maybe a little something else mixed in, somewhere. So far, the Chinese have been kind. I guess they have to get used to seeing dark people at some point. The sucky thing, though, was that I saw a Mammy statue in a restaurant in our hotel. Hair wrapped in a scarf, a big, dark woman serving a plate. Red lips and all. "We're disrespected everywhere," my mother said when I told her.

Other than that, I'm living easy. My hotel is...how do you say...G'ed out? No, no, no, that's not it. It's pretty chic, is what it is.

We still don't have tickets to any of the games. Our group is over 200 people, and the ticket-sellers wouldn't sell tickets in bundles of more than eight. One thing we are going to see is bicycle road racing. Because it's free.

Pictoriagraphs:I've been inducted into the Sacred Circle of Chinese-dom. This is my Members Only hat (plus my passport)


Um, my HOTEL ROOM.