The Olympics obviously started on Friday, July 27th, and I watched the Opening Ceremony at my friend Emma’s house. We had a grand party. She made snack food from all around the world and we had mixed drinks all night. Kat and I went dressed to support America and Josh wore a Canadian flag around his neck. We looked pretty good. I wasn’t the biggest fan of the opening ceremony, to which I was kindly told I had to be the only one in the world with that opinion. It was very strange. I loved how the metal bells all worked into one theme at the end and then turned into the flame.
If you didn’t watch it, let me recap it for you.
Each nation walked in with their flag bearer, a person holding their country’s name and a child in white carrying this metal bell. The flags all went on the hill but the person carrying the bell disappeared. Where did they go? We’ll find out!
After all the nations have paraded through, they brought out Sir Steve Redgrave who has won 5 medals at 5 Olympics in a row for Britain. He passed on the torch to 6 teenagers who were in training for the next Olympic games, making the logo of “Inspire a generation” ring true. They then went to this.
This was the Olympic cauldron. I thought it was so cool! The six teenagers lit six bells and the flames travelled through the rest of the cauldron.
Finally, the all rose to look like this! Unfortunately, this is the only Olympics where you cannot see the cauldron from outside the stadium. You can’t even see it in the park! Since the stadium isn’t in use till next week, no one will see the torch for a whole week!
Anyways…
Today, Brandy and I went to the Olympic Park to go see some Handball! I know what you’re thinking, “Rachel, you told me you’re going to archery.” Well, Brandy bought Handball tickets because she wanted to go to the Olympic Park and I said I would like to see it as well so she bought two tickets. I then offered my ticket to Heavens so that she and Danielle could go together.
Monday morning, we left BC at 9 and went on the train to Stratford.
Here is my OLYMPIC TICKET!
And my Olympic travelcard.
At the Olympic park, you can see the swimming arena from outside the park with the Olympic rings on it.
The entrance to the Olympic park!
I made it! And yes, I am wearing British earrings, I was lucky enough to go see the home team play handball.
The stadium where the cauldron is!
The ugly viewing platform.
In between the swimming venue and the viewing platform. Bet you can see the cauldron from up there! But of course, you have to pay to go up it!
That McDonalds you see in the far distance is the biggest Mickey D’s in the world!
Signage!
Brandy, Carol and I in front of the Stadium!
This cracked us up because this was a spot where someone was recording the news and Brandy ran behind them acting like an idiot. Unfortunately for her, the camera had already stopped recording and the guy was packing up to go home. Carol and I had a good laugh.
The nice thing about the park was it had beautiful flowers everywhere.
Lovely shot.
This is Wenlock and me. Wenlock is the Olympic mascot while Mandeville is the Paralympic mascot.
The Marshmallow basketball stadium.
The Copper Box where Brandy and I watched Handball.
This was a strange sculpture. It’s called the Coca-Cola Beatbox. No joke. It’s the interactive Olympic toy. Weird.
The pringle Velodrome where biking was happening.
For some reason, the Queen’s barge was down by the Thames. I thought this was really nice of HRM to leave it there. We of course, went down and took pictures of it as we had three hours to wander the park before any of our events began.
Up close shot.
Me and the barge.
Here is Carol and Brandy eating at the world’s largest McDonalds!
And me! We had our lunch at 11:30 because all three of us were starving. We waited for approximately two minutes to get served. Thank God we went early, on our way out we saw this:
And the line continued inside!!!
After, we wandered the park a bit more and found the Park Live.
Sponsored by British Airways, it was a big hill where you could watch live Olympic events at other venues. It was really cool. However, unfortunately, they were only showing equestrian stuff which held no interest for me so I read my book and enjoyed the sun. Finally, it was 1:45 so we all decided to go to our venues, Carol heading to basketball and Brandy and I to handball.
Brandy and I in line for handball at the Copper Box. Yes, we are wearing almost matching shirts.
IN THE VENUE!!! It was a lot smaller than we thought.
Our seats were amazing!
Shot of the court. We were three rows up from the court.
We sat near Olympic officials.
There were 16 countries involved in Handball and here are their flags.
The only countries are Norway, Brazil, Sweden, Great Britain, Angola, Montenegro, Denmark, Russia, Croatia, France, Spain, and South Korea.
This was our preshow entertainment. A group called Switch that did dance/skill tricks with soccer balls to music. It was so neat!
They also could do it with a handball!
The first matches’ teams! Great Britain(WOO!) and Russia!
I don’t think GB had ever had a handball team before but they tried really hard and the fans were great!
There were about 5 Russian fans in the whole crowd which made me feel a little bad for Russia but the couple behind us were Russian and they were cheering which made me smile.
The next picture is of the final result so I’ll let you figure out what happened.
Yeah, we lost, big time! Oh well. They got a standing ovation as they walked to their changing room.
Next match was:
Spain (YAY!)
Vs.
France (Boo)
Can you guess who I cheered for?
This game was so much better if only because both countries had actually trained their athletes to play this game. They were vicious! Girls were clotheslining one another, pushing each other, and grabbing hair. I wasn’t sure half of it was legal but it was such a good game! They tied however. Boo.
Here is me and Brandy being sad because neither of the teams that we cheered for had won.
Awesome Australian fan.
See why the Velodrome is called the Pringle?
This interesting woman was in front of us at McDonalds on the way home. Her shirt says nameonrice.com. Holy crow, she was special.
All in all, it was an amazing day and I am so glad I got a once-in-a-lifetime chance to have the Olympics in “my” city and such awesome seats in a sport I had only played a few times in high school but found utterly entrancing.
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