you get to hear all about it!

The bus turns the corner and I can see that it is going to be a long day.

On a bus with barely 20 seats and a maximum capacity that cannot be more than 75, there are probably close to 90 people riding this morning. Since I don’t have a choice, I squeeze myself onto the crowded vehicle and it takes off for the next stop, only to pick up ten more people. For 45 minutes I endure the sardine-like experience because, as it turns out, everyone on the bus wants to get off at my stop—Lincui lu, right outside the Olympic Athlete Village. We all stumble out of the sauna that was bus line 7 and go our separate ways.

I walk up the street a couple of blocks to get to my venue security booth. Just like every other day, I take off my fanny pack, scan my card, send the pack through the x-ray machine and get wanded by a nice Chinese girl whose English vocabulary probably only consists of ‘please turn around’ and ‘thank you for your cooperation.’ I exit the security tent and make an immediate right into the building where I am supposed to ‘check in’ for the day. I scan my accreditation and accept a meal and four drink tickets—three for water, one for a soft drink.



Afterwards, I wander over to the fenced-off media area where the number four on my accreditation card allows me access. I say ‘hello’ to all of my fellow volunteers (the ones who aren’t sleeping in the press conference room) and sit down to watch whichever sport the lone press conference room TV is playing. Dinner is delivered to the dining areas at 5:00 pm, and we head over to eat at about 5:30. The two small dining warehouses always smell the same, and it is never a good smell. I hand the woman at the door my meal voucher and proceed to the row of tables stacked with coolers containing our Chinese TV dinners. Moving down the line, a banana, dessert, napkin, wet-wipe and a spork are placed on top of my tray. We sit together at a long table and take the lids off our dinners. We find rice, as usual, accompanying several dishes of pork, chicken or beef, a pickled something, cabbage and a roll. Yum. I pick through my dinner avoiding things that look too slimy or green, and wait for the others to be finished. We take our trays outside to a set of six trash cans: two for ‘other waste,’ two for plastics and two for ‘kitchen waste.’ Avoiding spilling something on my pants again, I put everything in its appropriate cannister.

The first hockey game of the night is about to start! I take my place with some Olympic News Service reporters in the press area and take in all that is Olympic hockey. I know more about this sport than any other now, and I am even keeping stats of the teams in the tournament they are playing. With ten minutes to go until the end of the game, I venture down to my post in the mixed zone. The gates separating me from the field of play open when the game is officially over and I take my position at the corner of the field. In the beginning, I helped journalists get to their positions, but now everyone seems to know the drill, and we all know each other’s faces. I watch over the mixed zone operation as the athletes file by me either overjoyed at their win or disappointed with their performance. Journalists grab who they want from the procession, ask a couple questions and hurry off to finish their stories before deadline. The mixed zone empties out, so I go and sneak into a seat in the back of the press conference room for the post-game press conference. By the time it is over, it is time for another game to start, so I go do it all over again. After the last game’s press conference, I leave the venue with some fellow students and pack onto the crowded bus down the street from the security check. In a days work, I have seen several Olympic hockey games, interacted with journalists and athletes from all over the world and met some rowdy fans as far away from home as I am.

What makes it all worth it doesn’t happen until I get out of the bus and start the trek back to Renmin University campus. Occasionally, we run into others walking on the streets and sometimes they strike up a conversation. One night we were walking back, and a group of teenagers said ‘hello’ to us.

We were going in the same direction, so we start a casual conversation about volunteering in the Olympics.
“I just want to say thank you,” one of the girls says. “Thank you for coming here to help us.”

It was just two little words, but those words have stuck with me through the tougher times of working for the Games. It makes it all seem worth it in the end.