Olympics!

Last Saturday morning (at 5am!) we headed over to the Olympic Equestrian stadium in Hong Kong. We had tickets for the team qualifying event for dressage...6:30am Saturday, one of the first events of the 2008 Olympics! Even though we are not in Beijing there has still been a lot of hype about the Olympics as China is very proud to be hosting them. We decided that since we were only an hour from the stadium we ought to go be a part of the Olympics. It was early, but we had a great time. Dressage itself was not such an interesteing event considering we don't know much about horses, but we learned as we watched and I gained some appreciation for it by the end. We brought some reference reading and listened to the radio commentators to learn what to watch for. The routines were set to music and in the end I understood the comparison of ballet for horses, although there is a lot more creativity in ballet! Each routine was exactly the same as they were all being judged on the same movements...but that made it easier to learn what to look for! Overall, we had fun and we got to be at the Olympics!!


Here we are with our tickets and the stadium behind us. To the left is the enormous Olympic torch.


Pramod, Aimee, Me, and Ben with the yellow Fuwa (one of the Olympic mascots). They were dancing around the stadium and lining up for photos just like Disney characters.

Here is one of the riders making his circle around the outside of the ring before heading in to perform.

There are more photos on our web album if you click the link in the upper right hand corner of the page!