Oh, yeah! The Olympics!

I just finished watching the opening ceremony from the Olympics in Beijing on my DVR, and they sure spent a lot of money on it. It reportedly cost $300 million just to put on the opening, and in a country where hundreds of millions live in poverty, that seems pretty ridiculous. It was garish, it was opulent, it was exorbitant, it was almost dehumanizing to the thousands and thousands of Chinese people who performed -- and it was spectacular. I absolutely loved what they did with the torch-lighting at the end, after 4 1/2 hours of pomp. If you didn't see it, my words won't do it justice. I may watch the whole thing a few more times. Heck, with all the money they spent on it, it almost seems like I owe them that.
I love the Parade of Nations. I think it's my favorite part of the Olympics, watching all these athletes who've come from all over the world to represent their nations, soaking up the roar of the crowd. And I love reading all the cool names of the men and women who are carrying their nation's flag. Here are my favorites, for your amusement (and I'm not making fun; I'm sure they're lovely people, and they've all worked hard for this honor):

Fatmata Fofanah (Guinea)
Soloniaina Razanadrakoto (Madagascar)
Guwanc Nurmuhammedow (Turkmenistan)
Daba Modibo Kaita (Mali)
Priscila Tommy (Vanuatu)
Souleyman Chebal Moctar (Mauritania)
Bradely Ally (Barbados)
Bose Kaffo (Nigeria)
Daniela Del Din (San Marino)
Marcel Tshopp (Liechtenstein)
Abubaker Kaki (Sudan)
Jangy Addy (Liberia)
Fiderd Vis (Aruba)
McWilliams Arroyo (Puerto Rico)
Lopez Lomong (United States; more on him later)
Hem Bunting (Cambodia)
Ahamada Feta (Comoros)
Manus Boonjumnong (Thailand)
Miruts Yefter (Ethiopia)
Tsotang Maine (Lesotho)
Jeroen Delmee (The Netherlands)
Ele Opeloge (Samoa)
Dilshod Nazarov (Tajikistan)
Phone Myint Tayzar (Myanmar)
Hastings Bwalya (Zambia)

A lot of countries gave the honor of carrying the flag to the most famous athlete representing them, which is why there were four NBA players waving flags (Dirk Nowitzki for Germany, Andrei Kirilenko for Russia, Manu Ginobili for Argentina, and of course, Yao Ming for the host country). Sarunas Jasikevicius, a former NBA-er who now plays in Greece, carried Lithuania's flag, presumably because the Cavaliers succeeded in barring his good friend Zydrunas Ilgauskas from playing in the Olympics. (I think that stinks, but that's another matter for another time.) And the world's greatest tennis player, Roger Federer, carried Switzerland's colors into the stadium.

But I like what the U.S. did. There are literally dozens of famous athletes performing in Beijing, from LeBron and the rest of the "Redeem Team" to Lindsey Davenport to Michael Phelps, and so on. But none of those people got the honor of carrying the Stars and Stripes. Instead, it went to Lopez Lomong, a 1,500-meter runner who emigrated here in 2001, at age 16, as one of the "Lost Boys of Sudan." His story is particularly gripping -- he was abducted from a Catholic Mass at age 6, and his parents were so sure he'd been killed that they held a funeral for him in absentia. He almost did die in captivity, but he and three others escaped to Kenya, where he spent the next decade in a refugee camp before Catholic Charities paid his way to the U.S. He assumed his family had been killed, but they had moved to Nairobi, and he was reunited with them in 2003. Lopez was an excellent choice to carry the flag, and he's already done our nation proud, whether he medals or not.