Okay, so this is not exactly going to be an insightful, hard-hitting entry about some controversial education issue. In fact, this entry is not going to be about education at all.

It's going to be about the Olympic Spirit - a phrase that is being thrown around by native Beijingers and Chinese from across the country with ceaseless regularity. And it's about a moment that hits particularly close to home because, well, watch the video here and see for yourself:

What's so special about the Natasha Watley homerun, you ask? Well, the guy who catches it is my best friend from college, Matt Reagan. The fellow to the left of him doing a USA! USA! chant is me, and the lovely girl to the right is my girlfriend. That's right. Someone YOU know was on national TV just two days ago at the Beijing Olympics!

But the title of this entry is "The Olympic Spirit" for a better reason than the mere coincedence that a few Americans could get lucky enough to catch a homerun ball. It's called the "Olympic Spirit" because we never should have been at the game in the first place. You see, the game was all sold out (just like every venue is allegedly sold out here in Beijing, even if you see empty seats in the stands - those seats belong to someone who for one reason or another decided not to attend and not to give away their tickets), so we spent an hour before the game walking around the stadium looking for scalpers. There were none.

Then we ran into the parents of Stacey Nuveman, the starting catcher for the USA team, who were also looking for tickets. As we walked around outside the main gate asking people if they had extra tickets, it was--strangely enough--a couple of other Americans who showed the true Olympic Spirit by offering to give us extra tickets that they happened to have! We tried to pay them anything for the tickets but they flatly refused (although they later accepted a round of drinks bought by my friend the homerun-ball-catcher), instead helping us and the USA team's starting catcher get into the game for free.

So that's the Olympic Spirit. It is people who don't know each other, going half way around the world to do something nice for a random stranger. It's the pure chance of sitting in the right seat at the right time in order to catch a homerun ball. And it's the thrill of coming home to emails and facebook messages from friends who saw you on national TV (okay, fine, CNBC, but who's counting?).