A Bird’s-Eye View from the Bird’s Nest

A Holt International adoptee reports from the Paralympics in Beijing

by Kari Banta

Kari Banta is one of many young wheelchair athletes that the U.S. Paralympics Committee invited to write an essay on what disabilities mean to them—for a chance to go to Beijing. One of 25 winners from hundreds of entries, Kari is currently in Beijing as an observer of the games with Justin, her older brother, who is providing assistance in posting these reports. This is a dream come true for Kari, who was adopted through Holt International at the age of 5 from Thailand.

Friday:
We’ve made it here safe and sound, spent the night in a freezing cold room (they gave us warm blankets, though), and taken showers in the crazy shower/ bathroom… there’s no separation between shower and the rest of the room. The highways all have flower-boxes along the sides of the rails. There are trees and bushes and flowers growing everywhere in the perfect 75, sunny, light breeze, but smoggy-smells-like-faint-burning-rubber city. We have to walk 300 yards to the Bird’s Nest stadium, which is such a pain—I mean, why can’t we just rent a room in the Bird’s Nest? Well besides that we are located on the Paralympic green our hotel is great. I tried to buy contact solution yesterday, which was a fun exercise in not communicating. I figured out how to say “cleaner” and brought my contact case, but the word I was using seemed to mean something akin to “Windex.” We’ll repeat this experiment in the grocery store, where I’m sure fewer people speak English. Okay, off to breakfast and then the Water Cube to watch swimming and then later, sitting volleyball.

Saturday:
We had the best day yesterday—we were totally pooped by the time we got back to the hotel. The Paralympic swimmers were incredible to watch. One swimmer from Brazil only had one limb but still swam faster than either Justin or I could. We saw four Americans race in the semi-finals, two won their heats to advance, but everyone got cheered so that by the time the last swimmer touched the wall the entire stadium was yelling and chanting. In America the Olympics are much bigger than the Paralympics, but here in China you see just as many billboards featuring Paralympic athletes as you do Olympic. The opening ceremony for the Paralympics had more people in the stadium than the Olympics! And the volleyball game was almost entirely sold out! We’ve never been in a louder stadium. We watched the gold medal match between the United States and China—and the Chinese never stopped cheering. We didn’t let them intimidate us, though, and now have sore throats. We ended up winning the silver medal and (the coolest part) meeting the players afterwards. OK, more to come on crazy Chinese Paralympic-pin trading, the great wall, gross food, new friends and Paralympic sports.

Sunday:
Today I met three Paralympic athletes, bikers—Greta, Allison, and Michael—and got their autographs. They each had different disabilities, or they are in different “classes.” Allison, who won the silver medal, only has one leg to bike with, which puts her in a different class than Greta and Michael who have two functioning legs. I don’t understand all the classifications yet, but they have everything from fully visually impaired to legally blind to different classes for people with cerebral palsy (CP) to different classifications depending on how many functional limbs you have. (I’ll tell you more about this below.) After we heard the athletes speak we all shipped over the Great Wall, which was pretty great. I never thought I would get to go, and being there on the Wall was just incredible, like seeing the Grand Canyon for the first time. It’s a holiday here, the moon festival, so the wall was packed, packed with people, and getting up it in my chair was a little difficult, but we did it. Luckily it’s not all stairs and the Chinese were very helpful; well, helpful after we took a picture with them. Everyone wanted a picture with us, which of course is normal for me, but with the sun and all it got a little tiring. So we got up the Wall with some sweat, did some shopping, took some pictures, and went down. I liked it more than going to the mall. Then we went to the track events where we saw the visually impaired runners running with guides, wheelchair shot put, discus, and wheelchair racing. There were so, so many people… it’s a theme in China… the Bird’s Nest was nearly sold out (really!) which made it hard for our athletes to hear us cheer, but we know they could. And then after that: wheelchair basketball, my sport! I scrounged up a couple of tickets and went with some new friends (ditched my brother) and saw the USA women win the Gold! I haven’t cheered so hard since I’ve been here. I didn’t get back until almost 12 in the morning. So much is going on, I want to write about everything, but I cannot. Still, like I said yesterday, more to come on crazy Chinese Paralympic-pin trading, the Great Wall, gross food, new friends and Paralympic sports, I promise.