Olympics volunteers start with chopsticks

Source: Xinhua  |   2008-6-24  |     NEWSPAPER EDITION

THE first lesson William Heathershaw learned in Beijing as an Olympic volunteer was how to use chopsticks.

Beijing started yesterday to train the first group of overseas volunteers in media operations for the Olympics with a week-long course on Chinese culture at Tsinghua University.

Twenty-four students, including Heathershaw, from the University of Iowa in the United States, will learn about China's history, culture, environment, economy, media and ethnic minorities and tour the city. Tibet is on the list of their lecture topics.

"This program will help the volunteers know more about China before they get to work for the Olympics," said Xu Mengyao, who works with media operations at the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games.

As a warm-up, the volunteers held discussions with Tsinghua students yesterday and had lunch at the school canteen, where many found it hard to use chopsticks.

A business management major who studied Chinese for two years, Heathershaw said he had always enjoyed the Olympics and was expecting to experience cultural shocks in Beijing and see a totally different world.

His classmate, Daniel Libman, said they applied for the volunteer work out of a passion for writing, sports and expectations of a good travel and work experience.

Volunteer Andrew Bassman was surprised by the air quality in Beijing. "The weather here is good. Many talked about pollution but the sky here is so clear," he said.

BOCOG picked the Iowa volunteers after three rounds of tests, including story writing and role playing. After the Chinese culture course, they will join 268 other overseas volunteers in helping in Games media operations.