Day 6 - C-C-C-Cold and O'Canada

What a day today. A morning volunteer shift and then tonight at 6pm is the Opening Ceremony Dress Rehearsal. My first morning shift so up at 4am for the commute into town and a 6:15am start.

Today I was deployed to Team Athlete which is the Athletes entrance to the Transport Mall at the East end of the athletes village. The entrance is located beside the dining hall so for the morning shift many of the athletes eat breakfast then head out of the athletes entrance to catch buses to their respective training venues.

The weather this morning was very grey and the coldest I've experienced so far. The wind was blowing and although we were located under a very large tent, the minor amount of heat in the building wasnt enough to stop you from freezing. I like the Welcome Centre posting much more.

The day went by quite quickly. The nice thing about this location is you get to meet a lot of the athletes and speak with them so today was fun. Talking with Kevin Martin our men's canadian curling skip as well as the rest of his team. I met and talked to Jari Kurri of the Edmonton Oilers who is a coach with the Finnish hockey team. Enough of the name dropping.

The great part of the day happened later in the afternoon. At 2pm I went for my afternoon break (my supervisor Leon liked me as I didnt whine about being cold like a lot of the volunteers and wasnt picky about taking breaks ) my supervisor let me leave at 2pm and go and watch the Welcoming Ceremony for Team Japan and Team Russia. The ceremony starts with representatives of the four First Nations drumming in the teams and singing a welcome song. Then Sandra O from Grey's Anatomy and Rick Hansen (Village Mayor) took the stage for a short welcoming speech and an exchange of gifts from each country. The Olympic flag is raised and then each country has their flag raised and anthem played. The short ceremony concludes with a team of multi national drummers taking the stage and all the teams dancing around with the volunteers.

The ceremony was lots of fun and the throngs of media from Russia and Japan swarmed the celebrities in the group for interviews after the ceremony.

As I started to walk back to my post I saw my supervisor Leon coming toward me and said that we were done for the day so I got to stick around and watch the ceremonies for Team Poland and Team Greece. A couple of the Olympic mascots came out and were taking pictures with athletes and volunteers. It's hard to tell which is the mascot and which is the volunteer in my photo as I have on about 5 layers of clothes trying to stay warm.

While watching Team Poland a very nice Greek female athlete approached me and was looking at the various pins I was wearing on my accrediation lanyard. She asked in very broken english if I have a pin from Vancouver. I had lots so we traded an official Team Hellas (Greece) pin and an official Olympic Federation pin for one that I had. We talked for a while, she was a cross country skier.

A great way to end the day at the village.

Now onto the Opening Ceremony. All I can say about this is that I encourage EVERYONE to watch the opening ceremony on Friday night. We are sworn to secrecy about the details of the show. We got to see pretty much the entire production with all of the actual performers, however, they withheld a couple elements including the cauldron and lighting of the Olympic flame.

THE SHOW IS INCREDIBLE.

The evening started with John Furlong, Premier Gordon Campbell and Prime Minister Stephen Harper addressing the crowd of 55,000 saying thank you to the volunteers. The dignitaries are in town today as Team Canada has their welcome ceremony at 7pm tonight at the village so I assume they were heading off to the village after welcoming us at BC Place.

Then the show starts and it is amazing! I cant wait to watch the real deal on Friday night.

I have posted a couple of pictures from my day today so enjoy.