The Past Few Days

It's been an exciting past few days. I've gotten to watch all of the gymnastics events as well as some other sports. Women's AA was incredible! Finally hearing the National Anthem gave me the chills. Our girls did a great job and it was a well deserved one-two finish.
Having gone to Stanford, I have quite a few friends and old classmates who are competing here. I have wanted to get to some other events to watch and support them. I was able to watch men's volleyball the other day and I went to men's waterpolo yesterday. They both won their matches and the waterpolo team beat the #1 team in the world, Croatia, which was a great win for them. I lived in the same fraternity with some of the guys on both teams, and to be here all together at the Olympics is kind of cool. Hopefully, I'll get to see some more over the next few days.
Other than that, I been trying to enjoy myself as much as possible. I've been to a bunch of cool parties and met athletes from all over the world. I plan on watching all of event finals over the next few days and hopefully watching an event in the Birds Nest. I want to watch something in that stadium before I leave.
Ok, one last thing. Last night I went with my parents to dinner...this was no ordinary dinner. We ate at this outdoor market where they have some CRAZY stuff. Everything comes on skewers, so it's easy to pick and choose different things and sample a bunch of stuff. As you come up to this market, it's mobbed with people and has a very interesting variety of smells. Every breathe you take seems to be something different with the smells ranging from mouthwatering, to new and interesting, to down right nasty. I am pretty adventurous when it comes to trying new things so I wanted to see how far I could go. I started with some easy stuff (dumplings, lamb, shrimp) and worked my way up. Next, chicken hearts...they were actually really good. Then baby octopus...I love sushi and so this one wasn't that much of a stretch. A little chewy, but still good. Next up, snake...a lot more chewy than I was expecting, but ok. Definitely a new texture for me. Lastly, silk worm...I figured I probably won't have a chance to try one of these again so why not. They are BIG and instead of thinking about what I was eating I just threw it in my mouth and tried to finish quickly. The hard shell was getting stuck in my teeth and the insides tasted like dirt. Not the most pleasant thing to eat and I probably won't eat another one in my life, but I can say that I at least tried a silk worm. That was as far as I could take it. There were some other things out that were way beyond me, and I don't even think the locals were willing to eat that stuff. It was an amazing experience and I was glad to have some Chinese street food!
I also wanted to say thank you to all the people who have posted comments and sent me messages over the past week. Your words have meant a lot to me and I have read all of them many times. If you guys have any questions for me, just post them and I'll answer as many as I can. Thanks again.