Olympic Torch in Qingdao

The excitement is growing here in Qingdao as the Olympics are getting closer. This past Monday there was an Olympic torch relay through Qingdao. It started at the sailing center and turned down the main road that passes in front of our apartment complex. It continued down and around Qingdao and ended up at beach #1 where it went on a sail boat across the way back to the sailing center.

As you can see in most of my pictures we couldn't see very much because everyone was waving flags, but just to be there was so exciting. It is interesting to be here as the Olympics come. I think that the local government did not want the crowd to be too large, so they told most people to stay inside while the torch relay was going on. They bused almost all the spectators in from around town. That is why they are all dressed alike.
There were actually suppose to be two other torch relays in the nearby area but for some reason or another they were canceled. So what happened is all the relayers came to Qingdao and were going to "run" in this one. All together there were 259 people that carried the torch. So instead of running 2 km they each ran 50 m (about 130 feet). So each relayer did not actually do much running.

Where we were standing we got to see the fire pass from one relayer to the next. Unfortunately, all the flags & cameras were in our way so I can't say I saw that actually happen. But after watching it, Jeremy & I were both very excited to see the Olympics, so I think the purpose of the relay did it's job.