August 11, 2008 Email from Andrew

Andrew sent us the following email which has a lot of news that we thought everyone would be interested in.

"Well hello from China. The other night we had a show at our usual bar/club, Club 64. We watched the first hour of the opening ceremony till about 9. Lear and his grandfather got the lucky opportunity to go to the 2008 Beijing Olympic Opening Ceremony.  Then we headed off to the club thinking the guys (Ryan and Teddy) would perform. But soon we realized that every club/bar in all of Beijing had the opening ceremony televised. Being the stars we are at our club we got a nice seat outside facing the opening ceremony which was being televised on the wall. At first it was nice watching some of the countries come out then it got a little boring. Then I learned that the order of the countries went by the number of strokes it takes to write the country in Chinese characters. Finally after a while USA came on and we went crazy and it was a lot of fun. Some guys from Belgium began booing us and talking shit but we explained to them that we had cheered for them and quickly they began to cheer for the us. I also got a little opportunity to speak some French to them. Thinking the ceremony would be over after about 3 hours (11) we soon realized that wasn't going to be the case. We all gave a sigh of relief when the ceremony finally ended exactly 4 hours after it started. We thought it was our turn to perform in front of the very large crowd that was already there for the ceremony but the manager explained to us that the clubs main attraction had to go first. We said all right and waited, soon we realized the main attraction was actually a female and male strip pole dancing duo in leather boots, mini leather shorts and ripped up leather shirts and bras. Lets just say that was quiet the show. It was now the guys turn and we had a tired but large crowd and the third show went really well. But we were tired as ever from waiting around the whole night and called it a night after the show around 130.

 

Yesterday was Saturday and was our big day being that we got to go to the Olympic games. We slept in for a while and then went out for lunch. We were told at lunch (not by Lear seeing he wasn't there) that we would be leaving at 4 to get to our venue.  By the way our game didn't start until 8. So like planned we didn't leave on time but we left at 3:40. We asked Lear why in the world we would leave so early and he told us it was because of the subway. Having taken the subway ourselves the past few days all over Beijing we knew he was misinformed. We had to take 12 stops to get to the games and it still only took about 50 min. We got to the games 3 hours early. But whatever it's how the trip has been going the whole time. The tickets themselves are pretty cool seeing that they have RFD tags in them which are like tiny little computer chips. Chethan and I some how scored 2d row seats on the upper deck. Lear and his possy had upper deck 3rd row seats and the rest of the guys had upper deck nosebleed seats. We watched USA play Chec Republic. USA was doing terribly during the beginning of the game but ended up winning by 40 or 50. The best part of the game was seeing the Men's team across the stadium sitting their all by themselves. Rellinger and Teddy went down to where they were sitting and tried to get their attention. Kobe Bryant walked in late and was being escorted to their section when Teddy got a quick handshake with Kobe himself. Rellinger got about 20 feet away from all the players. They almost all had headphones on but still Rellinger was persistent and continued to yell trying to get their attention. They all ignored him the entire time even when he yelled at Jason Kidd who went to St Joes in Alameda and grew up in Oakland. He yelled everything he knew about Oakland, Alameda, St Joes but Kidd wouldn't turn around.  Lets just say Rellinger was quite upset about how they wouldn't even turn around for a sec. but anyways he got to see them from about 15-20 feet away and Teddy got to shake Kobes hand. All in all we got to go to the Olympic games and got to see the men's basketball team and it was as much as a success as it was going to be. Today is Sunday and we have no plans at all but to watch the games on TV and USA vs. CHINA basketball tonight, a VERY VERY big game here in  China.

 

Hope everything back home is going well see you guys soon.

 

-love Andrew.

 

p.s. we get no internet in Beijing and only get a half a bar on wifi in a weird angle in one spot so forgive the spelling/typing. and i hope you get this."