Hello Again

Well I’ve been home for a month now – kind of. I’ve actually been away on a fabulous mini holiday – just to get away from everything. It was great. I had the best and most relaxing time I’ve had for a while.

I got back in time to go to the Welcome Home Olympians Parade in Brisbane last Friday. It was fantastic. There were so many people cheering and waving. After we made our way up the Queen Street Mall to the park we were greeted by the Emcee and after the official proceedings I spent about 2 hours signing autographs. There were so many people leaning over the fence asking for autographs and photos. It was very hard to say no.

Now that I’ve been back from China for a while, I can elaborate on my Beijing experience now. I’ve had some time to think about it all.

Beijing was great. It was summer and it was very hot and humid. I saw so many historic things there like the Great Wall of China, Tiananmen Square, Forbidden City. I didn’t experiment with any of the food though.

I did heaps of shopping so I bought many bargains. I’m not a very good barterer but my friend is very good at it. So we went to the markets and shopped up a storm.

I was really lucky because my friend and training partner from my Club – Melissa Gorman (she does the 10km open water swim) also made the Australian Swim Team and we were able to room together as well as do all the tourist things together. That was great.

The athlete’s village was amazing. Clean, neat and very livable. I took heaps of photos. I met so many awesome people just roaming around in the village or at the pool or at functions that I attended. Michael Phelps, Princess Mary and Prince Frederick, Kevin Rudd, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, USA Dreamteam Basketballer Kobe Bryant. It was amazing.

The food in the village was good. I kind of stuck to the things that I knew so it was all okay. There was everything you would possibly need or want in the village and the volunteers were so helpful. Anything at all you needed or wanted – the volunteers would run to assist you however they could.

I went on a little bit of a tour with a guide in the second week after competition. He was fascinated that we were from Australia where the kangaroos are (and he made hopping motions in his driver’s seat in the car). I told him kangaroos are everywhere here at home and asked him about Pandas seeing they are their countries national animal. He said they are very rare and even though China is their home country they don’t run wild in their bush like our kangaroos do here at home.

I have heaps of work in front of me now. I’ll go back to training in a couple of weeks. I’m hoping to go to the London 2012 Olympics but right now I’m focussing on World Champs in Rome - July 2009. The trials for that will be in March so that will take care of the next 5 months for me.

                            Until next time………See ya                          

                                       Jess   J