Under Construction

Day 91
Well it was a long weekend, really long but extremely enjoyable. This past weekend I joined some of my compadres and headed off to Tianjin for a one-day tournament. It is kinda crazy as to how this all came together because it was about 4 weeks ago when Jon asked my friend Phil and I if we wanted to go to a tournament with him the first week of April. We both were excited and agreed and then asked how many people were going. Jon simply said, “well me, Tao and then you two…so 4”. Excellent. So for the last 4 weeks we’ve been “recruiting” players and Jon basically organized our trip and all of the work paid off this past weekend. We took the Friday night train from Shanghai and planned to arrive into Tianjin the next Saturday morning around 6am. We were not going to play until around 11am, so we had a lot of down time.
I have never taken a long trip train ride before and so I was pretty excited to see what that was all about. Excitement quickly turned into blandness. It wasn’t too exciting because I was so tired from another long week that I quickly fell asleep on my hard sleeper and before I knew it we were in Tianjin. Now for those of you that have ever seen pollution before in the states, I can tell you that you then have NEVER seen pollution before. Once I stepped out of the train I felt my lung collapse and I could just feel filthy. Tianjin is a heavily polluted area, to the point where it is just really difficult to see anything. Of course I’m exaggerating, but you get my point. There’s pollution, and we’re going to be playing ultimate with only 2 subs. We’re crazy.
So we had a lot of down time, and we filled some of that by just “exploring” Tianjin a bit. We walked through a square and saw tons of people either playing a version of hackysack with a feathered weight, badminton, tai chi, or just walking. I never understood why Nai Nai and Yei Yei were so active in their dancing and walking until coming to Shanghai; and it just made so much sense. Old people are very active and I have found that they do not give up on life and try to stay healthy in some way. It was cool to hang out and play with these people and I think they enjoyed seeing some foreigners and some of them even joined in throwing the frisbee a bit.

To be continued…I’m tired…give me a break (I have become addicted to Kit Kat bars)

Just copy and paste the links into a browser!


http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2231943&id=21414060&l=d7d6bdd095

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2231958&id=21414060&l=8f2ef23e91

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2231956&id=21414060&l=45ecfdf6ca

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http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2231948&id=21414060&l=54af2211eb

Enjoy!