The 2008 Beijing Olympic Games

Every 4 years I seem to get this insatiable sense of patriotic pride. Is it because we are allowed to elect new governmental officials? No (well, not for this blog post at least), it's because the whole world has taken a break from their current strifes (except for Russia and Georgia), and come together to celebrate major athletic accomplishments through the Olympic games.

This year, the Olympics are being held in Beijing, China, so I have quite an interest in how the games progress. Why? Well, in the summer of 1999 (good lord, that was almost a decade ago!), I had the opportunity to study in China for 2 months.

As a college administrator, allow me just a moment to plug the imminent benefits of studying abroad. Be it for a term, a month, a summer, or a year, the process of immersing yourself in a culture vastly different from your own not only looks good on your resume, it's positively life changing. Never in my life have I ever learned more about myself than when I was in a country where I didn't know the language and looked incredibly different from everyone else.

As the world has focused upon the Chinese culture these last few weeks in preparation of the 2008 Olympic games, I have been overcome at times with the memories of traveling to China all those years ago. When Matt Lauer filmed an episode of the Today Show from the Summer Palace, I giddily shouted to my hair dryer that I'd been there! When the opening ceremonies of the games included some history of the Gansu Province, I happily reminisced about the month I spent in the city of Lanzhou there, studying at the Gansu University of Technology.

This weekend, I had the opportunity to walk down memory lane with an old college friend who went with my on this Chinese adventure back in the summer of '99. We both agreed that someday, we wanted to get back to China, to see just how it had changed since we'd been there. How would it feel to walk around in Tiananmen Square after all this time? Would walking the Great Wall have the same impact on me as it did then?

All of these questions, I vow to answer. Someday.