Editor’s Note: Meet Junling Cui, our exclusive wOw Woman on the scene in Beijing. For the Olympics, wowOwow goes right to the source for an insider’s perspective on the news coming out of Beijing. Junling will be reporting from both the women’s perspective and from the point of view of a Chinese national, on all things Olympics — from the athletes’ stories to the social impact of the Games.

Day Eight

Two vignettes from the Beijing Olympics, which you probably won’t see on NBC, or for that matter on CCTV, China’s state-owned television network.

Last night, after about 10 PM, I was coming home by bus from the Bird’s Nest. Four teenage girls get on, all of whom (like thousands of others) are BOCOG volunteers (Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games). They work in one of the transportation centers, making sure journalists and visitors get on the proper buses to get where they want to go. They get on and chatter with each other like teenage girls anywhere; gossip about a boyfriend, a phone call one of the girls got from another. They talk about the onrushing school year. Nothing about the Olympics, about medal counts or Liu Xiang, or China’s more fortunate "heroes" that the announcers on TV here blather on about endlessly. Then the chatter dies down and two of the girls, sitting in the seats just ahead of me, drop dead asleep. One leans forward, her head tucked into the crook of her arm, which rests on the seat in front of her. The other leans her head back against the hard plastic seat; as the bus hits potholes and bumps in the road her head bangs against the seat back. She doesn’t stir. God, these kids are exhausted.

They’re so normal, these girls, and they’re working their butts off to try and help things go smoothly for these Games. They’re not fanatic nationalists, not Commie automatons; they frankly don’t care who wins the most medals, as one confides to me. "We all have favorites, sure — I like [gold medal diver] Guo Jingjing, but who wins the most medals doesn’t prove who the best country is," one of the girls said to me after I queried her when we got off at the same stop. Out of the mouths of babes …

Among some of my friends there’s been a little undercurrent of resentment at how much the Western media — the non-sportswriters, at least — have dwelled on the flaw in how these Games have been presented; the Internet censorship, the inability of people to protest, etc. Sure, most of it is true, but they feel it’s been, perhaps, covered maybe a bit too much, relative to stories about normal people living normal lives. My mind wandered during that bus ride last night. Is the international press missing just how ordinary the kids sleeping in front of me on that bus are? You’re in a better position to judge that than I.

Vignette No. 2:

Yesterday evening in the Olympic Village: This is where the One world-One dream vibe of every Olympic Games is supposed to be most obvious, with the athletes of the world coming together and living together, getting to know people from different cultures and countries. I’ve always wondered about that, wanted to see it for myself, so I wandered around yesterday in the part of the village open to visitors. There, for the most part, I saw Russians shopping with Russians, Lithuanians with Lithuanians, a group of Chinese browsing in a bookstore. But then, outside, a place where you trade Olympic pins, I saw something I have to say I didn’t think I’d see.

Two Chinese athletes chatting jovially with three Japanese, who were synchronized swimmers. They were chatting in not-half-bad English. They talked about where they were from in their respective countries, how their competition had gone — the usual stuff. They were all, I would say, in their late teens. Then they exchanged pins and were off. I had watched them for about five minutes. There was nothing forced about their exchange; they all laughed at their not-so-great English. I don’t want to go all "Jim McKay" on you (as my husband put it when I told him about this), but it was sweet. An Olympic moment, as they say.