Day 13 - Fun at the Village

Third morning shift in a row and it was hard to get out of bed today...a little tired this morning but it is my last morning shift for a bit so it's all good!

Fully briefed and assigned to Team Athlete which is the Athletes entrance to the village off Quebec Street and where the athletes catch the motor coaches to their venues.

It is bloody cold this morning!!!! The unfortunate thing about this location in the morning is that there really is nothing to do until around 11am. All of the athletes have breakfast at the dining hall then run to catch their bus by about 8:30am and we do nothing for them while they exit. Only after about 11:30am does anyone start returning so we just stand around and talk and feel our feet and fingers go numb in the cold.

I met a nice lady named Pat today who lives at Predator Ridge. She is relatively new to Vernon and her and her husband are retired now and are both volunteering at the games. We chatted all morning and passed the time yacking.

At around 11am I was moved into the athletes dining hall which was a sweet post as all the athletes were streaming in for lunch including all the NHL guys as apparently they sleep in through breakfast.

Very funny moment when three Norweigan hockey players came in and one was unfortunately on crutches with a large walking cast on his foot. A Swedish player that was sitting having lunch with the Sedins and Peter Forsberg got up and started talking to the group. Obviously I cant speek Swedish or Norweigan but the conversation went something like this:

Swedish guy: "Bourke Bourke Bourke" english translation "Hello Sven what happened to your foot"

Norweigan guy: "Svengi Svengi Svengi" english translation "It really hurts think my ankle is broken"

Swedish guy: "Bourke Bourke Bourke" english translation "What happened?"

Norweigan guy: (This is really how it sounded) "Svengi Svengi Svengi - PRONGER"

No Lie - I couldnt understand what they were saying but I assume that when the guy said "Pronger" I think it's safe to say that he took a Pronger shot off the foot and has a broken ankle now.

After my lunch break I was moved back to the athletes entrance but I was only there for about 5 minutes when the supervisor asked for a volunteer to go to the Anti Doping post. I was the first to put up my hand so I got picked and away I went.

The Anti Doping post is pretty cool. It is located at the Polyclinic which is a fully functional hospital located inside the village. I took a wander through the place looking for a washroom and there is a MRI, XRay, operating room, Cat Scan the whole nine yards in there with quite a few volunteer doctors, nurses and even two dentists. I was talking to one of the nurses and she said that a lot of the athletes from poor countries were booking dentist appointments as they dont get or cant afford dentistry in their countries.

Anyway, the Anti Doping spot is cool as there is a clinic in this building where athletes must come to provide a sample and be tested for performance enhancing drugs or banned substances. The clinic was quite busy prior to the games but now that the games are going on most of the testing is done at the sport venues. However, from time time, the IOC will select athletes at the village and notify the team at this clinic and a team of two Doping Control Officers head out into the village to find the athlete and bring them back to the clinic for testing.

My job was to monitor the door to make sure that only people coming into the clinic have a purple pass. Well nothing exciting happened on my 2 hr shift but I did get to have a great conversation with the coach of the Chinese womens curling team who is a Canadian. He had brought his Chinese co-coach into the polyclinic to see a doctor about a bad rash he had developed on his arms. The canadian coach said that the Chinese guy is getting several calls a day from various Chinese government officials wanting updates and really pressuring him to ensure they win gold at these games. He said the guy is so stressed and he thinks the poor Chinese guy's rash is totally stress related.

I was finished at the Anti Doping spot after about 2 hours and then headed home for the day. I am really looking forward to sleeping in tomorrow as I dont have to work until 2pm on Thursday.

If anyone has any questions about stuff at the village please post a comment and I can answer them if I know the answer.