Olympians visit Huangshi!

Last week, I started noticing all of these new structures being built all around the city along with thousands of flowers that were brought in to decorate Huangshi. After a few days, I realized that the structures (like the one pictured below) all had something to do with ping pong. Well, believe it or not, there was going to be a ping pong festival in China! Who would have thought? But this wasn't just any tournament. This past weekend, Huangshi hosted the 2012 Women's World Cup. I was amazed and excited that our little city had the honor of hosting something so big. There were table tennis players from all over the world here to compete.

All of these structures were hand  made out of flowers! So beautiful and quite impressive!

Even more exciting was that the opening ceremony was held at our school gymnasium on Friday. We have the newest and nicest gymnasium in the city, other than the public stadium in the park. Our school was decorated with banners and lanterns and hundreds of people showed up Friday to be a part of the ceremony. 

Prepare to be even more amazed! The opening ceremony featured the world champions of table tennis and the 2012 Olympic medals winners!!!! What?!?! Olympians are in Huangshi? What? Olympians are at my school!

I, of course, had a ticket to attend the opening ceremony, but due to the continuous miscommunication and language barrier that is my life in China, I missed the entire thing!!! Thats right, the whole thing! My boss, Diana thought that the event would take place all day so I waited until after my morning classes to go. As she and I were about to enter the gym, all of the spectators came rushing out because the event was OVER! All of my students were running up to me, either saddened almost to the point of tears because they didn't get an autograph or elated because they were one of the few that got something signed! So there I was, standing in the rain, only feet away from Olympians, that I would never get to meet. As if to rub salt in the wound, all my students asked me why I didn't go to the event, that if I had gone I would have been the only foreigner in the building so I certainly would have gotten to meet the Olympians, take photos, and get autographs! 

I had to get the following photos from one of my students who did get to go the opening ceremony...

The first photo is a group of the Olympic team, including gold medal winner, Zhang Jike and silver medal winner, Wang Hao. The other two pictures are of the ceremony inside of our gym. I still haven't even been inside the gym, but it looks amazing! 

This is the picture of Zhang Jike and Wang Hao receiving their medals this summer. 

 I was only feet away from what was most likely my only chance to meet Olympic medal winners! But, considering I had to google all of these people just to figure out who they are, I think I'll survive :)

It was more fun to see how excited all of the students and teachers were over meeting some of their country's champions. After all, ping pong is a very big deal here!