Our first Olympic event was Men's Indoor Volleyball, where we had the opportunity to watch the US play Venezuela. (USA eventually went on to win Gold). Volleyball remained one of our favorite events. The venue was very impressive - clean, cool and with cheap concession stands, and this impression of the venues remained strong throughout the entire Beijing Olympics. What they lacked in organization, they made up for (almost) in beautiful venues.
The second strong impression was of the cheering sections. Beijing organized older people as "volunteer" cheerers for Olympic events. They didn't really cheer for any team in particular, except China, but would join in to other's cheers and just generally make noise throughout the events. The most popular - and perhaps only - cheer in Chinese is "Jia You" which literally means "add oil/gas". One person yells out "Zhong Guo" (China), "Mei Guo" (America), "Ba Xi" (Brazil) and the entire crowd replies "Jia You". The volunteers were quick to join in whenever they had the opportunity to add a "jia you" to someone's chant.
Stacey and Derek also had tickets to the event, so we got to cheer the USA on to victory - yiqis.
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