Olympic Times

I'm going to try to recap my break as best I can, hopefully keeping it short too. Here goes.

After a bit of a journey, Steph and I finally arrived in Torino for the Olympics. We got settled into the apartment we were renting and then headed out on the town. My first Olympic experience was pretty darn cool-to see the town all done up, thousands of people out supporting their countries; I was really happy that I got to be a part of it all. The first night we pretty much walked around, saw lots of Olympic stuff (Medals Plaza, the lights on the streets, etc.) and crashed pretty early. The next day we ventured around town a bit more and then headed to the arena for our first hockey game, US-Sweden men in preliminaries. After waiting outside in the snow and sharing our umbrellas with an American family and a Belge, we were really relieved to get inside. I'll admit that the rink might not have looked much different from other hockey rinks I've seen, but just knowing that I was about to see an Olympic game there made it that much cooler. Not long after Team USA took the ice for warmups, and from there it was on. Even though the game wasn't terribly exciting and the US lost 2-1, I still had tons of fun. There were people everyone decked out head-to-toe in US gear, certainly the most I've seen since I left home 5 months ago, and plus Steph and I had our Olympic cowbells that we rang every chance we got. It was a fantastic first Olympic experience to say the least. We were almost back to the apartment when we got a text from Ben, another English assistant who was at the Games with his friend Tony, both from Minnesota. So we headed to meet them and had a low-key night out in Torino. Good times all around.

The next day the rest of our group came to town-Lana and her brother Adi (from Canada, Prince Edward Island to be exact) and Ailsa (British). Lana and Ailsa are Steph's roommates, also English assistants in France, and Adi is on a Rotary exchange in France. We dropped their stuff off and then showed them the town, and finally headed to the ticket office to see if Adi could get a ticket for the gold medal women's hockey game that Steph and Lana were going to see. In the end, after meeting a nice American guy at the ticket counter, we all walked out with tickets for the game-Steph, Lana and Adi with better seats, and Ailsa and I with their original tickets for a discounted price. We made our way to the arena, and took advantage of our one-hour wait with an extensive Olympic flame photo session. It was so strange to see all of these things in person after seeing them so much on TV, and the flame was one of the things that got to me most, given the tradition behind it and everything. Finally we were allowed to pass the first gate but still couldn't get into the arena, so we headed to the party tent and had an amazing time with the randomest assortment of people you can imagine-Canadians, Swedes, Americans, Swiss, and I have no idea who else. Everyone was drinking and there was music and some of the US women's team, who had just won the bronze, came to the tent-it was a darn good time. Finally we got into the arena and the game got underway. Of course it would have been cool to see a North American showdown, but I had a great time cheering for our northern neighbors, and anyhow the US team had already won bronze. The game was fun, certainly more exciting than the men's one we saw, and after we got to see the medal's ceremony and everything. Another surreal Olympic moment. After the game we got to see the US women's team outside again, with their medals this time! Overall an amazing experience, I'm so glad we decided to do it.

Next up-Pisa and Florence!