Got up early this morning to watch the olympics opening ceremonies on CBC. Right now, it's at the parade of nations.

The ceremony's theme was the four great chinese inventions- gunpowder, paper, printing, and the compass.

Of course, there were a lot of fireworks- on and around the stadium, and the 29 footprints as well- fireworks in the shape of a footprint throughout the city, firing one after another towards the bird's nest.

I liked the drummers' countdown at the beginning- they were in two long horizontal blocks, and their drums lit up, displaying a countdown. 30, 20, 10, and then each of the numbers to one, the top block displaying the number in chinese (with some simplifying), the bottom in arabic numerals.

I liked the giant painting thing as well. There was a scroll on the floor that displayed images, and in its center was a large piece of paper. These guys in black did a sort of dance on the paper. They had black gloves containing ink, and they painted the paper using those. (and then the children who carried the flag near the beginning gave it color later)

There was this little nine-year old in a dress who sang, and then children in the dress of the 56 (if my memory serves me correctly) minorities of China carried the chinese flag over to the flagpole. And then some soldiers received it from them at the pole and hoisted it. The chinese national anthem came after that, which I have not heard in a long time (and forgotten how to sing).

Apparently some people were worried about the gray fog that was over beijing at the time of the ceremonies. (pollution worries. And it gets pretty bad there in summer, though I haven't been to beijing in a long, long time.)

Long post, mostly just me rambling and collecting my thoughts.