Great Team, Great Experience, Great Memory.
I have leaned and experienced for more than what I have expected after this trip. I know what the World Cup is and how the World Cup is operated. More importantly, I feel that I am close to the world cup and hopefully once China winning the hosting right, I will be able to make some solid contributions.
Bye my team, best and best wishes to every one ❤️
FAN ID is not only the identification for the foreign visitors to get into Russia without applying for the VISA, but also the identification for the World Cup ticket holder to be accessed into the stadium. The ticket holder must have both valid ticket and valid FAN ID to enter the stadium.
After arrived at St.Petersburg, I headed to the St. Petersburg Stadium immediately since I had the ticket for the game between Brazil and Costa Rica. I have heard that Brazil is a superpower in the football world since I was a little boy, thus, I was really excited about the match. Meanwhile, it is an important game for Brazil. They must win it to secure a spot for the next round.
The game was very competitive and even though Brazil dominated the game, Costa Rica did not let Brazil 
score till the additional time of the second half. Brazil defeated Costa Rica by 2:0 finally.
This is the last day of the Russia trip, I'm sitting at the airport with Zee. Firstly, thank you Lisa for having us on this wonderful learning trip. It was so amazing meeting with great people in this industry. I've always appreciated and many thanks to Shannon organized everything perfectly for us. Actually yesterday we had said goodbye to everyone. It was so hard since we became familiar and very close to each other. And I really hope we can meet with each other someday, no matter in D.C, Indiana or Texas. No measure of time with you guys, I will always keep this memory forever.
Time to say goodbye to Moscow, where I have had a great memory. Based on our agenda, we are supposed to take the high-speed train
heading to St. Petersburg on June 22nd at 7 a.m, which means we all need to get up at around 4:30 and leave the hotel before 5 am.
It takes around 4 hours from Moscow to St. Petersburg. The train is clean which is better than what I have expected. More importantly, the train is very stable, so I am able to read the book and write my daily journal. The price of food and beverage on the train is totally acceptable. In a word, I enjoy the whole trip.
As the biggest sporting event around the whole world, World Cup is looking forward to bringing the game from each venue to the whole world clearly. To understand that how the broadcasting system work, we had an opportunity to visit IBC and discover the stories behind the scene. According to the tour guide, for this year’s World Cup, there are 37 cameras in each stadium to do the broadcast thing from every angle. After capturing the image of the game, the signal of each game will be sent back to the IBC and then distribute to the whole world.
Since our hotel is quite far away from the downtown Moscow, we took public transportation every day to attend different meetings and activities. I have to say the public transportation in Moscow is effective and timely. We usually take the metro and the train comes in every 3 minutes. More importantly, each metro station is designed by different themes. Some of them are decorated with
classic lights, and some of them are surrounded by sculptures. Comparing with the metro system, the bus is even more advanced. There is a big screen at each bus station to present that when the next bus will come. Anyway, I enjoy taking the public transportation in Moscow and will strongly recommend for others.
Finally, I am here in my first game between Morocco and Portugal at Moscow. Before entering the stadium, I took some time to visit those main sponsors’ booths, especially those new faces from China: Wanda, Mengniu, Vivo, and Hisense. I asked couples of people at those booths that whether they knew the brand and all of them had no idea about that, so, for these new Chinese sponsors, the very first thing will be how to promote the brand name and awareness.
The game was good. Cristiano Ronaldo scored for at the very beginning of the game and helped Portugal defeated Morocco by 1:0. The atmosphere was even better. Based on my observation, most of the fans are from Morocco. Even though their national team lost the game, they dominated the spectators’ seats.
Red Square is one of the most famous places in Moscow and it is a must-go place for sure. Besides those historical stories behind the buildings and sculptures, the crazy crowds pick my attention as well. Since this is the first time for me to participate in the World Cup onsite, I was totally shocked by the thousands of fans around me. They wore the similar national team’s jersey and showed their passion to the others. I must admit that I was addicted to the environment and joined them
spontaneously.
Germany and Mexico game was on 17th, and I did not have the ticket for the match, so I decided to visit the Fan Fest to explore and have some experiences there. Moscow Fan Fest was located near the Moscow State University, but it was quite far away from the nearest metro station. It was designed for the fans who do not have the ticket and would like to go somewhere to watch the game. There is a World Cup official store, and I bought some gifts and souvenirs. The staffs are friendly but I have heard a lot of complaints about their inventories. The game and atmosphere were amazing except Germany lost it. That was actually the first time for me to be involved into the huge sporting fan-related event like this, so I was overwhelmed by the crowds, especially by those Mexican fans. Anyway, it was a great experience!
