Day 13: Temple of Heaven, PR experience

This morning we forced ourselves out of bed and hopped on the subway to see the Temple of Heaven before heading to work.  We’ve been exhausted after working such long days at the tennis center, but we decided it was worth the loss of sleep to see the temple...

Leading up to the temple. 

Amazing walkway on the way to the main temple. 

I’m so glad we did because it was completely worth it. The fog around the temple made it seem surreal and it was totally relaxing. My favorite type of place. I also loved the crowds of people around, just hanging out enjoying each other's company.

Love these men playing cards.

The architecture and colors are absolutely gorgeous. It just felt ancient. I felt worldly just standing there and I could have spent all day there if I had time.

Can't get enough of these colors. 

Tai Chi master in the park. 

The clouds/fog around made it seem surreal.

I wish I could have stayed there all day.

We made it back to the hotel after just in time to hop on the shuttle to the tennis center—where we headed over to watch Isner play Djokovic at Lotus. Now that we’re in the semi-finals our press load is a lot lighter, which is nice.

Djokovic getting set up for the game- the Chinese love his shirt because of the dragon logo.

The “smog/fog” was in full force today. It seemed to be moving down into the stadium, and after a while I had a feeling in my mouth as if I had licked the sidewalk. Not pleasant. Katie and I decided to watch the rest of the match in the player’s area to get away from the smog!

After Isner's loss it was sad to walk him to press!

They played a tough match and I didn’t know who to root for—it was my two favorites. But Djokovic won and we still got to take both of them to press after the match.

I knew that something was going on with that reporter who kept asking about the “smog." Today it came to light that he twisted Djokovic’s words in a pretty negative way in a story that ran this morning.  They were not happy about it and he actually refused to comment on anything else that specific reporter asked about him later in press. It was interesting to see the way it was handled with the officer and the player. Definitely a learning experience for me and a tense moment in the press room.