Track and Field Blogs - Jenny Barringer

There is an illness sweeping the Olympic Village. It manifests itslef most clearly in the dining areas and international zones. It causes people to jingle as they walk and randomly stop other pedestrians with a tarret-like outberst of "pins? pins?"

Really though, pin trading in the Olympic Village has been a fun new experience and can easily sweep one into obsession. When we arrived at team processing every athlete received pins for our event area along with some pins from USATF. Also, in many sponsor gift bags there would be included an Olympic themed pin. I remember getting pins when I made some world champ teams but it was never a really big deal. Here in the Village- it's a big deal! I think I started out my journey here in China with about 20 trading pins. Most of them alike. When Billy and I go to dinner or walk around the complex it's a great conversation starter with athletes from other teams or countries. We've also enjoyed giving some of our pins away to some of the Chinese volunteers here that have been especially helpful. What were once 20 very similar pins, after a week or so at the Village, have transformed into a beautiful collage of colors and shapes representing so many different countries and often funny interractions.

Speaking of common communication breakdowns, I had a funny experience with one of my rooommates back in the states. I finally got ahold of one of the girls early yesterday morning (I think?) and told them to get onto Skype so we could do a video call. A lot of the computers provided here in the Village already have webcams set up for this purpose. Anyway, Cari got on the computer at the house and for the first few minutes I could see her but she couldn't see me on video while she could hear my voice but I couldn't hear her. It was like a blind person and a deaf person trying to communicate. We stumbled around with me talking and her typing messages until we finally at least got two-way video. I was half reading her lips and mostly just trying to ask yes/no questions so she could just nod haha! It was a bit of an ordeal but it was at least fun to see her.

Now onto the finale... Pandas! I did an easy shakeout-type run today. It's the day before the day before :) and so the workouts are over. Mark would say "the hay is in the barn." After I was finished running I changed and ate lunch and I went on a zoo adventure with Coach. We caught a cab and went off to try to scout out the Beijing Zoo. Honestly, it was a bit of a disappointment. I don't know if any of you remember where I spent my 21st birthday last year? Heather and I were in Japan at World Champs and I wanted to go to the Aquarium. So, we went for my birthday and boy, was it a wild birthday! Babies crying everywhere, parents giving up on taming their children, people with cameras and video trying to get their money's worth. Anyway, it was sort of a mess. The Zoo reminded me of that a bit but it was also kind of dirty and I just felt sorry for the animals in their little cages. I'm kind of soft about that kind of stuff though. So, Coach and I wander around, read the rules to the park (which were the only English in the park and it was hardly English) and were on a serious Panda search. After rounding dozens of bends, walking through abandoned monkey houses, and seeing a depressing exibit full of different breeds of dogs, I was doubting the presence of any real and happy-looking Pandas. But Coach didn't give up hope. He was an expert navigator and finally found our marquee event. We entered the Panda house ("Giant Panda House" which could mean the pandas are giant or the house is... I'm not sure) and saw three cute fuzzy bears chowing down on watermelon in their respective corners.

Like I said, the zoo was a bit of a disappointment but I got to see pandas as least :).