OLYMPICS/ Volunteers
Media students at test events
(China Daily)
Updated: 2007-08-31 09:48
Less than a week after he arrived in Beijing, Nathan Cooper noticed how much attention Chinese journalists paid to him.
The journalism major from University of Iowa was interviewed at least nine times in the media zone during the first day of the Junior World Wrestling Championship, an Olympic test event.
Cooper and two other classmates were among the first group of international volunteers during an Olympics test event.
They collected on-site flash quotes for the Olympic News Service. The young journalism volunteers are part of a joint program by the Beijing Games organizers, Beijing-based Tsinghua University and University of Iowa, to train 26 American volunteers for similar tasks during the real time Olympics.
"No, I don't feel like a star," he said. "I'm really impressed with the ways people react to wrestling here in China."
Others caught the excitement in the air.
"I was 10 years old when Atlanta hosted the Olympic Games and I don't remember they were so talked about like Beijing. It's going to be high energy and a very good learning experience for us," said Michael Stout, 20, a volunteer from Iowa.
Xu Mengyao, BOCOG's project supervisor of international media volunteers, told China Daily that more than 200 media volunteers from 13 overseas universities, who are native speakers of English, will be trained for next year.
"This is a global news operation serving the global media," said Judy Polumbaum, professor at the University of Iowa. "
Having these young people from abroad be a part of the Olympics and Paralympics is a tremendous contribution to fostering cross-cultural understanding," she told China Daily.
Asked about the challenges of working during next year's Olympics, Marcus Schulz, one of the three volunteers, said the competition between journalists would make things a little tough.
"But the walls of journalists packed in the mix zone during the real time Olympics have a much tougher job than us," he said.
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