Friday, August 8, 2008

Opening ceremonies

Magic, pure magic. My cheek muscles are just a tad sore. I think I smiled throughout the whole four hours. My goodness!

Even the commercials, which were especially created for these games, were interesting to watch, didn't you think so?


Did you recognize the names of all the countries? I didn't. Of course, I haven't kept up with all of the name changes over the years, either. When I was working with my stamp collection on a regular basis years ago, I knew the name of every country and its history. So much has been forgotten. So many differences now. The world is much smaller, yet vastly more complex.


Some of my very favorite moments included seeing Yao Ming with the little 9-year old boy who was such a hero immediately following the recent earthquake; watching Laura Bush looking so pleasant, composed, and cool in the sweltering heat; marveling at the last Chinese athlete to carry the torch running on air around the top of the stadium; being in awe at the 2,000-some drummers who opened the festivities with their precision countdown routine; and enjoying the waving undulations of the typeset keys.


A very special evening. I'll try and keep these memories fresh in my mind for a long time. I'm so glad I watched.

4 comments:

whalechaser said...

Yes, it was truly amazing.
Recognize all the countries...there are some that are only 14,000 people. That's a whole lot smaller than my little town in Arkansas of 76,000!
Whale

Tammy said...

We enjoyed what we saw......which was up until present China history about 1976, all of those blinking green suits......

We had a lovely rainstorm, which we needed so badly, but the rain cut out that particular channel on our t.v. (we don't have cable) and we couldn't really watch anymore from then on........

I can't wait to see what's on t.v. this morning. :)

Goldenrod said...

I wouldn't consider 76,000 'little', Whale. That's almost 20x bigger than the town where I grew up! I'm glad you didn't lose your reception like Tammy did. Nice rain, but awful timing.

Craig Peihopa said...

I loved the drums as well with their lights and the fluro batons. How good was that. Our commercials were in total harmony with the commentary...LAME. Believe it or not the man who was the creative director was Australian and also one of the commentators and shut up almost the whole time. What was that about? We got the raw deal here Goldenrod and they are only 8 hours away for heavens sake.

Anyway, as always I love your posts. Hope you got my mails I sent via webmail?