We lined up for about 10 minutes for food & drinks. It was a good thing, too, because after the event started, the lines were soooooo long that we couldn't buy anything else!

Seating in the Bird's Nest

Volunteers helped us find our section and told us where our seats were--in the seventh row up from the track!  Speaking of seats, the Bird's Nest's seating capacity is around 90,000 seats, (about 10,000 seats are temporary and will be removed after the Olympics). Our school has a student population of 1800, so if you do the math right, that's about 50 times the students in my school! It's HUGE.

Race Walking, Shot Put, and More! 

First up was the men's 20 km race walking start.  Then the Women's shot-put. That metal ball went really, really far. Then they had the men's 3000 km steeplechase. The steeplechase is an obstacle course, basically with hurdles and water. It looked really hard, but fun thing about it was after the athletes had run by on the first lap, a bunch of volunteers would come out and move the hurdles and position the rail.

After that, we watched the Women's pole vault qualifying heats. I had never seen pole vaulting before and we don't have it at school for track and field day. It looked a lot more complex than on Mario and Sonic and the Olympic Games. The pole would bend to a point where it looked like it was going to snap! (Check out the photo!)

We also saw the women's heptathlon long jump as we sat really close to the sand pit. We didn't know what the sloped things were at the end of the pit were until we saw them level off the sand. Lots of fun equipment! Check out his video of the sand machines.

On the far side of the field, they had the men's discus. They were some of the biggest guys I've ever seen.  My mom liked the little red remote control cars that the judges used to bring the discus back after each throw. See the red cars in action.

After over an hour, the front runners of the men's 20 km race walk came back to the Bird's Nest for its finish. A Russian guy finished first, and got a gold medal for Russia. But it was amazing how fast they were "walking", faster than most people would go running 20 kilometers. After the race walk, they had the women's 100m and the women 400 meter preliminary heats. I can relate to how hard the 400 meters is because we run it at school. As for the 100 meters, if you screw up your start and you've already lost.

We left a little early because we were hot and hungry. On the way back, we took some pictures of the Bird's Nest and looked around the Olympic Green. There were various pavilions for the different sponsors of the Olympic Games. We went into a special room in the Coke pavilion. It was great. First of all, they had air conditioning, free Coke products, and some Snickers bars and cookies. You could even get a limited edition aluminum Coke bottle. Plus, you could take a picture with a real torch with the Bird's Nest in the background.

After all that excitement, we went home. I will never underestimate Coke or the Bird's Nest!

 Next up, Behind the Scenes