After I returned from the wall, I was getting hungry since it was near dinnertime. I was pleasantly surprised to discover a Brazilian Churascarria in my hotel. Don't get me wrong. I love Chinese food, but you know what they say about too much of a good thing. To be blunt, I'd cut my left arm off right now for a cheeseburger. Anyway, I had dinner at the steak house and went for a stroll to walk it all off.

My hotel is only a couple blocks away from the olympic park, so I figured it was a good place to go for a walkabout. You probably recognize the

bird's nest stadium from the olympics. At night, the city lights it up with red and gold lights to represent the colors on China's flag. Don't ask me about the sign on the left. It is just another fine example of 'Engrish'. You see things like this all over Asia. It helps to remember that Asians use our language as a mere 'decoration'. Few people read the signs except for the foreigners. You just have to chuckle about it.

The odd thing about this park is the thousands of people who are still here. There aren't many foreign tourists, but the Chinese tourists are everywhere. Practically everyone is walking around with a camera and taking pictures of their loved ones in front of the bird's nest and water cube.

I doubt it would do any good to explain to everyone that the Olympics officially ended about eight months ago. They still haven't got the message. The theme of the Olympics was "Beijing Huang Ying Ni" which means "Beijing welcomes you". If you remember the five, little mascots from the games, they were named "BeiBei", "JingJing", "HuangHuang", "YingYing", and "NiNi" after this slogan. The most popular items for sale in the park are kites with drawing of the little girls on them. Children were flying them everywhere. My Chinese isn't good enough to know for sure, but I think the parents were telling their kids that the mascots live inside the stadium. To make matters worse, there was a song from the games with the same title as the theme. It was an ingratiating little number which got under your skin after about two minutes.