Okay, Okay, I have been resisting posting since Mark turned it over to me. I am going to try to remember that this blog is not a chance for me to live out my dreams of being a celebrity, but a chance to share our upcoming trip with you. Well, as all of you can imagine, a trip to Beijing is a pretty big deal. The process started about six months ago when we tentatively started making plans. We hooked up with a friend of the family who is a travel agent and began making tentative flight and hotel reservations. "Tentative" might sound harsh, but I didn't want to jinx anything, as Mark still had to swim out of his mind at Trials in June (which he did!!).

For the last year we continued to hear, and read, about how hard it was going to be to find, much less buy Olympic event tickets. I shrugged off the entire issue until recently... and recently I started FREAKING OUT. Thankfully, last week a block of tickets opened up and we ended up having access to swimming tickets, diving, tickets (which I am so excited about), ping pong tickets, gymnastics tickets, and soccer tickets, among others but these were our tickets of choice.

(When I refer to "us" and "we" I am referring to my mother and I. We have been planning for a couple of years that if we had the opportunity and a reason to go, that we were going to travel to Beijing together... I am so excited to go with her!)

Anyway, we started filling in the blanks of our trip as soon as Mark touched the wall to qualify for the 2008 Olympic Games. Our trip was officially on... and we still had a lot to do. In the last few weeks since trials we have been making plans and taking care of details such as travel insurance, vaccinations, Chinese visas, etc. It has been a very involved process, but I am happy to say that it is all done and we leave tomorrow!!

This evening I have been running around the house like a crazy woman, packing, making photo copies of my passport, gathering up granola bars and fruit snacks to take on the trip... I felt like I was running in circles, so I decided to sit and write.

I will be leaving Charlotte tomorrow (Wednesday) at 11:30am and won't get into Beijing until 10:30am on Friday. On Friday we will run around Beijing, picking up tickets, checking into our hotel, and getting ready for an incredible 2 weeks!

I have got to get back to packing... and I have to get Daisy out from under the bed (I have not seen her since I pulled the suitcase out of the storage closet!). I will continue to post updates and highlights from our trip... stay tuned...