A brush with Diego Maradona and watching German hockey players cry are among Olympic memories for former Simon Langton Girls’ School pupil Esther Irwin, who is teaching in Beijing.

She sums up her experiences in her final blog.

It’s been really interesting watching the Olympic spirit of the Chinese through a window of crude understanding.

I can speak an embarrassingly small amount of the language and cannot read any of it pretty much.

Therefore I’ve witnessed a lot of the Chinese spirit over this past year, and during the Olympics, purely visually.

The mammoth speed of construction I wrote about in my first blog, the flowers and finishing touches to the streets, the volunteers scattered everywhere.

Everything I’ve seen has been so energetic and it all seems to present an attitude of welcome to the rest of the world.

Friends who speak and read Chinese say the country has been arrogant about Olympic success and have an attitude that doesn’t celebrate the success of others (this is notable in their lack of acknowledgement when the opposing team scores during the games).

But generally I’ve had blissful ignorance and have loved every minute of this city’s preparation and the Games.

See the video from Herne Bay of the Olympic handover ceremony>>>

Part of the reason that I love living here is because it’s all foreign – none of the country’s decisions or systems or attitudes are anything to do with me.

I can’t vote and I barely understand the language so it means I’m free to just enjoy my experience, relishing the positive and shrugging away the negative.

It’s been exactly true of the Olympics. Every criticism has washed over me and every success has made me feel so delighted for the country that has been my home for a year, so perhaps my blog is biased!

I will never forget these two weeks, and I can’t wait for London 2012. The Olympics will be really at home then!

I guess my favourite moment was Christine Ohuruogu winning the gold for the 400m as I was there. That was nuts!

And the saddest moment would be seeing the German women’s hockey team come fourth. They all just sat down on the pitch at full time and sobbed.

It was awful! Coming away with nothing!

And I did brush past Diego Maradona in the last two days.