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DEL.ICIO.USThe Great Y’all of China
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Sada Jacobson meets the press.
Given the 12-hour time difference, my Thursday’s winding down. I spent it in search of Atlantans in Beijing, and let me tell you: I found some.
I started out the day visiting with Westminster Schools grad Sada Jacobson, a U.S. fencing team member who competes Aug. 9 and Aug. 14.
With her family on the way over from Dunwoody, Jacobson shared a funny story. Years ago, someone asked her dad, David Jacobson whether he and his wife, the parents of three girls, would keep trying for a boy. He responded that they loved their family just as it was.
Too bad, the friend consoled. With three daughters he was sure that David Jacobson, who fenced at Yale and was a member of the 1974 U.S. Men’s Saber National Team, wouldn’t be able to share his love of sports with a child.
Ha!
Sada’s younger sister Emily competed in the Athens games and youngest sister Jackie has picked up the sport as well.
“I think he sees a lot of himself in us,” she said.
While the Games are providing the Jacobsons a most unique family trip, they won’t linger long. Sada has to hustle home and get ready to begin law school this fall. She’ll enroll at the University of Michigan.
“I’ll get home, have a couple of days to do laundry,” and then she’s off. Jacobson isn’t sure what kind of law she’ll want to practice, but laughs that her proficiency with the saber might give her an advantage one day in court.
“There are a lot of elements of my athletic career that will come in handy in my future career,” she said.
Dr. Fred Fritsch in the Olympic Village, where the flags of his native and adopted countries fly.
My next stop visit Thursday was the Olympic Village, where the athletes are staying and where Marietta’s Fred Fritsch is here for his fifth Olympics, including two as a competitor and three as a team chiropractor. The former Navy Seal competed in the 1976 and 1984 Winter Olympics on the bobsledding team. A powerfully built man, he has enjoyed robust hobbies over the years like diving, sailing and parachuting, but wracked himself up pretty good in the process.
“I literally destroyed my body,” said Fritsch, 55.
In 1995, the Ohio native headed south to study at Life University, finishing in 1998. Shortly thereafter, on a trip to Central America to work with sports clinics, he struck up what would become a lasting relationship with the national athletes of Guatemala. This marks his third Games with the Guatemalan team.
“Guatemala is like my second country,” said Fritsch, who operates a clinic in Woodstock. There are nine men and three women competing from Guatemala this year and the small group is a close one, he said.
By the way we almost weren’t allowed to take the picture above, since there was a ceremony going on in the background and the guard stationed along the periphery told us “only very important persons” could pass. We were somehow granted brief dispensation.
On my way out of the village I engaged in a little international diplomacy in a little office billed as the Chinese Learning Center, where Xu Dan is eager to teach anyone who will stop by a few key phrases.
She’s a tough teacher, too. She taught me some basics and then ran me through a set of drills to make sure the lesson took.
To return the favor I taught her how to say “y’all.” I told her it’s the favored translation of nimen hao, which means “hello everybody.”
Strangely, she’d never heard the term and was just delighted when she got it right.
Kendra White is happy to be on the press bus, since it hasn’t come under fire like her church bus once did in Atlanta.
I’ve noticed that a Southern accent over here will attract a fellow Southerner, even a fellow American, like a fly to honey. Sweet little Kendra White hopped on a media bus this afternoon and said hello to everyone, which is not exactly common.
“Hey,” I replied, and in that one syllable (well, two), we were BFF. A Kentucky native who’s a rising senior at Asbury College, she’s volunteering here, having landed an internship through her school. She says several years of competing in the Atlanta Open, an annual Bible quiz game, prepared her for the work she’s doing.
“It definitely improved my diligence and my ability to focus,” she said, adding that her church group always returned from Atlanta with stories to tell the folks back home.
“One year our bus got shot at,” she said. “It was crazy.”
Maybe that explains her chipper demeanor. The press buses here are crowded and slow, but at least no one’s firing on them.
If you speak French, Spanish, Mandarin Chinese or English, Andrea Feuer can help.
I wrapped up with a visit to National Aquatics Center, where Atlanta International School grad Andrea Feuer is something like a one-woman U.N. She was born in her mother’s native Venezuela and the family moved with her Atlanta native dad’s job to Shanghai and Puerto Rico before settling in Atlanta in 2001.
Feuer, 20 and a rising Yale junior, is fluent in Spanish, French and Mandarin Chinese. As you’d guess, her volunteer gig involves a lot of translating.
“I made the conscious decision to come before the Olympics because I wanted to see Beijing transform,” said Feuer, who completed her sophomore year at Beijing University. She has no air conditioning, and even her fan quits working from midnight to 6 a.m. weekdays, when the power is turned off. She does have a luxury not available to many of her fellow students, though: showers located in her building.
She says the experience has made her independent and resilient - not to mention marketable.
“These are going to be my future colleagues,” she says of the friends she’s made at Beijing University to be her future colleagues. “They’re the new face of China.”
Comments
By Bill Schwartz
August 7, 2008 12:34 PM | Link to this
AWESOME ! Great story. Keep them coming.
By Tom
August 8, 2008 11:13 AM | Link to this
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