Last day in Beijing

Route and misfortune

I woke up pretty late with my Dad shaking me out of my sleep. He tried waking me by opening and closing the windows, turning the A.C. on and off, finally I got up, but I was still in my dreams and not fully awake. Eventually, when I was awake, and realised how long it had taken me to get up, I realised we had a huge problem. Dad told me the Mac was sick and need to take him straight to the hospital. We walked to our old hotel to try and send off some of my journal entries for our blog, but it wouldn’t send through. Poor Mac! At this point Feng Bou called to ask which train we would like to get, and we decided to get the night train. He arrived a little while later with our tickets and my newly repaired cell phone, I thank him and swear that I will be more careful. I call Mom to let her know my phone is fixed. Feng Bou tells us that he will not be coming with us, which Dad was not too worried about. But still gets straight on the job of finding a new assistant. In the taxi we discuss the possibilities for our trip and decide to stick to our plan. We arrive at the Mac hospital, which is actually the photo agency where Dad’s old student is. I go straight to the ping-pong table to find it empty, with no-one to play with I was a bit disappointed. Dad was with Olivier, the man who tried to help us fix the Mac. I left their conversation, which made Dad mad, who told me off for my disinterest in their conversation. I go and juggle with a ping-pong ball. I am still bored and go in pursuit of a ping-pong player, but I don’t find anyone. Finally, I came across a book about Spanish sportsmen, which was surprisingly interesting. I was so happy when Tina then asked if I would like to go on the internet, but after a few minutes Dad called me back to go and finish writing my blog entry, this I was not happy about, but did it anyway. Fortunately, they were still trying to fix the computer, so I only had to type up today’s entry. At this moment a young student, Liu Jia, arrives. She speaks with Dad and we explain to her our travel plans, and she suggested we go see the Olympic Stadium at night time. Then I happily went to play ping-pong with a Chinese man from the office. To go to the stadium we had to take a cab, along the way, Jia tells me the history of the Olympics. The swimming pool is magnificent. The Games grounds is a very special place. We take the taxi again and go visit the tennis hall, and that’s where I decide to call my friend Erwan who is a good tennis player, but he had already left the office. I go back to the hotel with Tina. When I arrived, I looked for Dad everywhere, but he wasn’t in the room, or in our previous hotel, nor in any of the different restaurants near our hotel. I eventually find him in the lobby of the hotel. We decide to go to the internet café to edit our journal entries.