Almost Like a Moviestar

Has a photo journalist ever followed you home? Into your house? Your bedroom? Well, that's what happened to me today.

This morning at 10am I had an interview scheduled with a local newspaper. They wanted to do a story on me about my experience as a volunteer in Qingdao, similar to the papers back home in Washington and Indiana. We decided to meet outside of the Olympic Sailing Center and she interviewed me in right on the sidewalk.

She began to fire away questions and I began to fire away answers; my Chinese has come a long way since my junior year at WWU! The interview lasted about 25 minutes and was even interrupted by a near fiasco of a Croatian woman being denied access to the Olympic Center. For some random reason, the policeman on guard would not let her pass through. Thankfully, I was able to convince the policeman to allow her to pass; her patience had dwindled rather quickly. After the end of the interview, we scheduled for a photographer to meet me as I finished up work this evening and photograph my daily routine back to my apartment.

We met up as planned and things went smoothly at first. He took a couple of pictures of me en route home in the park and on the bus. However, I quickly realized that he also wanted to take pictures of me at home too! I quickly texted my host family asking if this was okay. Conspicuously, of course (praise God for texting).

Surprisingly, it wasn't as awkward as I braced myself for. I just posed eating, watching TV, reading a newspaper, and a book. Not too bad. But nevertheless, one time is one time too much for me. How do movie stars survive?