Arrival at Loughborough Base
We were greeted on our arrival in Beijing by a huge thunderstorm, torrential rain and really poor visibility. However the Olympic flame was clearly visible and shone through the gloom on our taxi journey from the airport to our base at Tsinghua University.
Various friends and supporters of our Loughborough Olympians have already started to arrive at our base at Tsinghua. Chris Kirton's coach, Russ Barber and his mum and dad had already arrived and joined the team for our first Chinese dinner yesterday evening. Mike Peyrebrune and Ian Oliver are already out and about. Tom Gee and Tracy Croft from East Midlands Development Agency have just this minute arrived and others are expected today.
The morning has been spent sorting out everybody's schedules - mixture of official functions and events. Tickets are very hard to come by and whenever you get a group of people who have got tickets together it's like watching youngsters exchanging top trump cards in the playground..."I've got that, I'll swap you that one, you can have that one, has anyone got one for..."
All our kit and pop-up display material arrived this morning, just in time for our "family and friends" reception this evening. All looks great (job well done Tamsyn!) and has made the place look like a little bit of Loughborough in Beijing. Email and internet all now up and running so if anyone wants to contact us we are her but remember 7 hours ahead of you in the UK.
We have two invaluable translators with us, Christina (one of our students) and Robin Jones (formerly of the School of Sport and Exercise Sciences at Lboro). Christine seems to specialise in making arrangements with the hotel staff and Robin has obviously worked hard on his Manderin vocabulary for meal-times!
Please keep checking out the site for more news of the Loughborough Olympians in action.
Chris
Various friends and supporters of our Loughborough Olympians have already started to arrive at our base at Tsinghua. Chris Kirton's coach, Russ Barber and his mum and dad had already arrived and joined the team for our first Chinese dinner yesterday evening. Mike Peyrebrune and Ian Oliver are already out and about. Tom Gee and Tracy Croft from East Midlands Development Agency have just this minute arrived and others are expected today.
The morning has been spent sorting out everybody's schedules - mixture of official functions and events. Tickets are very hard to come by and whenever you get a group of people who have got tickets together it's like watching youngsters exchanging top trump cards in the playground..."I've got that, I'll swap you that one, you can have that one, has anyone got one for..."
All our kit and pop-up display material arrived this morning, just in time for our "family and friends" reception this evening. All looks great (job well done Tamsyn!) and has made the place look like a little bit of Loughborough in Beijing. Email and internet all now up and running so if anyone wants to contact us we are her but remember 7 hours ahead of you in the UK.
We have two invaluable translators with us, Christina (one of our students) and Robin Jones (formerly of the School of Sport and Exercise Sciences at Lboro). Christine seems to specialise in making arrangements with the hotel staff and Robin has obviously worked hard on his Manderin vocabulary for meal-times!
Please keep checking out the site for more news of the Loughborough Olympians in action.
Chris
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