A lot has happened in the past four months, a bit too much to try and do a brief summary, so I'll just start with what's happened to me so far in February. On Tuesday I returned from Vancouver to visit my dad. This visit just happened to coincide with the Opening Ceremonies of the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, and it was cool to be able to go into downtown Vancouver to see some of the free events and pavilions. We didn't see any Olympic events, but it was interesting to see how the whole thing was being run and how it effected downtown Vancouver.
It was very unfortunate that on the first day of the Olympics, the day of the Opening Ceremonies, the Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili died while doing a training run on at the Whistler Sliding Centre. This event seems to have cast a shadow over this year's Olympics, and it was very sad to see an Olympian die so young and before he had a chance to compete. However, the tribute to him during the Opening Ceremonies was very good, and I think that the Vancouver Olympic Committee dealt with this tragic event very well.
On the second day of the Olympics, I went downtown to visit the Canada pavilion and to check out some of the other events available to the public downtown. There was one thing that I noticed right away - the incredibly long line ups! To get anywhere it seemed like you had to get into some sort of line up! I guess that's just what happens when a city hosts the Olympic games though. The pavilions were great though! They were quite interesting and I thought that they represented our country and our provinces very well.
The next day I went into Richmond to see the O-Zone Celebration venue where you can watch live events and go to a skating rink. What I realized that day was that Vancouver should not host the Winter Olympics. It was a very summery 15 degrees outside... in February! Perhaps the Summer Olympics would've been a better choice for Vancouver. The skating rink at the Richmond O-Zone was great however, and later we took the SkyTrain to see the Olympic Flame downtown. The Flame was a huge disappointment. Not only could the public not get within 25 meters of the Flame, but it was also fenced off and the fences were covered with a fabric so that the public couldn't even see the Flame! I've heard that now they removed the fabric and made a viewing area for the public, but still many, many meters away. That just didn't seem like it went well with the whole Olympic spirit!
Another note about the Olympics - YAYYYY!!!!! So we've finally won a gold (now in fact three gold) medal at an Olympics at home! Congratulations to Alexandre Bilodeau, the first Canadian to win a gold medal on home soil!!! It really seems like the first gold could not have gone to a nicer guy, he really deserved it.
Tomorrow I'll be heading off to the Olympics once again - this time to see an actual event - after winning the ATCO Celebrating Excellence Contest in which the first prize was a one day trip to the Vancouver 2010 Olympics! I had to write an essay about how I celebrate excellence in school, in swimming and in my community and submit it to ATCO. There are 166 (I think?) youths going from Alberta - a boy and a girl from each political constituency - going to the Olympics and the boy and the girl in my constituency, Edmonton-Strathcona, are in my class! I'm the boy and my friend Jade Robinson will be going as well! We will both be going to the Sweden vs. Belarus hockey game, as well as to Alberta House for lunch, and to a Victory Ceremony at BC Place in the evening.
I will be posting an update after my second visit to Vancouver as well as some pictures from both trips - so check in sometime this weekend!
1 comments:
Glad to have you back!
Now where are the pictures from your Olympic trip? Come on, I wanna see them!
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