accidentally awesome.

When you are told that you need to be on a bus at 6:30am, a typical response would be to raise an eyebrow. When you are told to be on that bus at 6:30am because it will take you to your next phase of Olympic Volunteer training, you basically jump up and down with happiness. If you haven't noticed, so far we have pretty much been on vacation. I was expecting to be put to work as soon as I got to China... but I'm savoring this time to explore because once July 22 (my birthday) comes around, we don't have a day off until the Games end on August 25.

So the two people in our group working at the Main Press Center and the four Photo Assistants for Laoshan Velodrome (I am one of these four) head to the MPC for what we thought was training. As it turns out, the four photo assistants were not supposed to be there. At this point, we didn't care at all since the MPC is a beautiful, brand-new giant facility buzzing with Olympic excitement. We were kids in a really big Olympic candy store.

Since the four of us were basically stranded at the MPC, we made friends with some other Chinese student volunteers and they offered to show us around. From this point on, I will have a huge smile on my face, my jaw will be dropped and my eyes will be wider than ever. We saw everything at this building... giant press rooms where reporters will be frantically writing stories, workrooms for AP, Getty Images, AFP, Bloomberg (if you are at all interested in News Media... this is a dream) and even a huge huge huge press conference room that holds 800 people! The four of us wasted no time in asking if we could sit at the front desk... daydreaming about what amazing people will be sitting in those very seats in just a month.

One of the coolest things I saw was what they call "Pigeonholes." These are a series of little shelves that the most recent information for the events are filed into. Every sport has a section, and the shelves stretch on forever!

Basically it was the best. And we're all really glad we got on that early bird bus.

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Short story: We were also the studio audience for a Chinese CCTV talk show. Hilarious. And everyone wore headphones because everything was interpreted. So when the host would tell a joke... we would laugh a few seconds later after we got the translation. That is all.