By Parin Desai
After working the overnight shift at the International Broadcast Center, all I wanted to do at 10:30am was snuggle in my bed and fall asleep. I was jarred awake at 12:30pm by a phone call from one of my fellow UNC-Chapel Hill students saying a group of them were leaving at 1pm to find a place to watch the opening ceremonies. I quickly got up to take a shower and ran out the door to meet them.
They had decided to go to Chaoyang Park because the park was rumored to have a big screen showing the opening ceremonies. We arrived at about 2pm and were excited to find that Coca Cola had set up a huge display with large screens to project the ceremonies. After idling around for a bit, we asked the employees which language the ceremonies would be broadcast in. They told us the park was closing at 7pm and they were not showing the ceremonies.
It was already 4pm and we now did not have a place to watch the opening. We quickly found our way back to the subway station and began calling anyone we knew who might be able to tell us where a good place to watch the ceremonies would be. We learned there was a big screen at Tian'anmen Square. We were really excited because what better place to watch the ceremonies than at one of the most widely known places in Beijing.
We arrived at Tian'anmen and saw huge crowds gathered around the square, but no one was actually in the square. We asked a guard where the screen was where we could watch the ceremonies and he told us that they weren't showing the ceremonies either. They were just showing fireworks, which was why all the people were gathered around. 8pm was quickly approaching and we still had no place to watch the ceremonies. This was the reason we all traveled to Beijing, to watch the Olympics.