The Paraylimpics AKA Heaven

This is a post dedicated to describing my experience at the paralympics, but before I tell all, I would like to say that A. I went to the police station to get my residence permit, just like my 53 other classmates, and B. Thanks for the advice about boys, dad, I'll take that to heart. Moving on. Last night was an extremely long, interesting, and immensely fun night. First, my mom picked me up from school, and we rode the most crowded bus I have ever been on IN MY LIFE to the olympic village. The olympic village is proof that when China puts it's mind to something, becomes creative and spends a few million on a park instead of starving peasants, something mind blowingly amazing results. Everything is planned to a T, if that's how the expression goes. When we arrived, we met up with my sister, my grandparents, my sister's boyfriend, and a guy who I thought was my cousin at the time. More on that later. We first went to "The houses", which are basically large, very modern buildings where major sponsors put up exhibits and advertise their products. We went to the Bank of China building, the Samsung building, and of course, the Coca Cola building (which we waited in line 30 minutes to get into). Each place, people would stare at me like they had never seen a foreigner before (4 people asked to have their picture taken with me), but really, I'm used to it. The houses were extremely modern and well thought out, and I even got a free coke. We spent about 3 hours doing that. Then, as we were walking along, my sister and her boyfriend started yelling at eachother, and then proceeded to engage in a very public, very loud argument. Basically, I have no idea what went wrong, but my sister was royally pissed. The boyfriend began to storm away, but my mom went up to him and convinced him that my sister was being irrational, and coaxed him into coming back. My sister was long gone at that point. And The BF was looking very depressed. We walked on, down the gorgeous path surrounded my fountains, trees, and tons of Chinese people. I was walking with the "cousin" at this time, since he was the only other neutral party in the matter. At some point, I asked him how he was related to my sister, just to make conversation since I thought I already knew, and what was his response? He is our brother! He said that he was younger than my sister, and that he goes to college in Beijing. He did look an awful lot like her. So here are the options... A. my parents paid the ridiculously large fine for having 2 children  B. They have different fathers, so no fine was due   or C. His English is very bad and he had no idea what he was actually saying. I'm almost sure it's A or B. Anyway, he was very friendly and walked with me since everyone else was uber pissed at one thing or another. Moving On. The bird's nest was AWESOME!!! it looks just as cool from the ground as it does from the sky. And it is positively enormous inside. We saw the men's 400 meter. At this point my sister was talking to me, which I took to mean that her mood was finally improving. Once outside again, my mom pushed my sister towards her boyfriend, and they "made up". Happy face. Oh and by the way, the water cube lights up at night an changes color. It is too cool for words. at 10:00 we walked to to subway and went home. I was exhausted. But I stayed up until 1:30 writing an essay an memorizing characters. My mom stayed up until about 12:30, then came in, patted me on the head, said "Ni you tai duo zuo ye", aka "you have too much homework", and then went to bed. And that's that. 

The pictures are of me in front of the CCTV tower, me in the bird's nest, The bird's nest from a cool view, My mom, sister and me, and last but not least, me in a room in the coke house.