I noticed an add for the Terry Fox Run (7 K) in one of our local expat magazines, and saw that you could be a corporate sponsor quite cheap. I showed it to Jason, and he decided to have his office be a sponsor. Jason explained to his staff what a "charity" was, and why it's good to participate in charities. He also told his staff of 5 at the time (which included our Ayi and driver) to invite some friends to do the run with us. Jason told them they'd get a free shirt and we would take them to lunch afterwards. We were hoping to get maybe 10-15 people to participate. FIFTY people later, Jason finally cut them off and told them they couldn't invite anyone else! But wouldn't you know it, we had to add just one more. The Plant Man (yes, that would be the man that came to water the plants in the office) asked Jason's secretary if he could come. When she told him "no", he then asked if he could just come and be our photographer. Never ones to turn down paparazzi, we gave him the okay. (On a side note: The Pla
nt Man became our personal photographer. We had him take pictures at every party or event we had after that. He started handing out business cards at parties, and to this day, still has a great photography business going in the expat community. One of our friends gave him the English name, Jeff, but he'll always be The Plant Man to us.) So now 51 people later, we showed up at Chaoyang Park (where the beach volleyball games were held at the Olympics) the morning of the run. Now I say this next part in the nicest, most nonstereotypical way possible....The Chinese aren't really known for their fashion sense. So what you and I would consider appropriate dress for a 7K run, certainly wasn't being worn. Thankfully, they had to wear the Terry Fox shirt that had been given to them. (The organizers make the participants wear the shirts so they can see who is really supposed to be there. If not, thousands (yes, thousands) of people would show up just to see what was going on.) With the shirt taken care of, that only left them the bottom half of themselves to dress. People were wearing slacks, skirts, blue jeans, and dresses (with the shirts over them). Most men had on their dress shoes; ladies had on heels. The woman running in front of me carried her purse the whole way (which says a lot about how fast I can run since a purse carrier can go faster than me). And most every man smoked cigarettes as they ran...including our driver. Everybody in our group finished the race, except JR and Ayi, who didn't make it past the merry-go-round. And as promised, we took all 51 people to lunch after the race....Chinese food, of course.
nt Man became our personal photographer. We had him take pictures at every party or event we had after that. He started handing out business cards at parties, and to this day, still has a great photography business going in the expat community. One of our friends gave him the English name, Jeff, but he'll always be The Plant Man to us.) So now 51 people later, we showed up at Chaoyang Park (where the beach volleyball games were held at the Olympics) the morning of the run. Now I say this next part in the nicest, most nonstereotypical way possible....The Chinese aren't really known for their fashion sense. So what you and I would consider appropriate dress for a 7K run, certainly wasn't being worn. Thankfully, they had to wear the Terry Fox shirt that had been given to them. (The organizers make the participants wear the shirts so they can see who is really supposed to be there. If not, thousands (yes, thousands) of people would show up just to see what was going on.) With the shirt taken care of, that only left them the bottom half of themselves to dress. People were wearing slacks, skirts, blue jeans, and dresses (with the shirts over them). Most men had on their dress shoes; ladies had on heels. The woman running in front of me carried her purse the whole way (which says a lot about how fast I can run since a purse carrier can go faster than me). And most every man smoked cigarettes as they ran...including our driver. Everybody in our group finished the race, except JR and Ayi, who didn't make it past the merry-go-round. And as promised, we took all 51 people to lunch after the race....Chinese food, of course.JR and Ayi's version of the Terrry Fox Run
Guards to keep out onlookers, and keep us from getting too rowdy.
People who wanted their picture taken with JR (Jason and I were just a bonus).
1 comment:
Wow, that was 5 years ago! Fun to revisit the past. Cute little JR!
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