Olympic weekend

Well, we have survived our first Olympic weekend! :)

Here's how the last few days panned out...

The Winter Olympics sadly began with a tragedy on Friday morning: one of the luge competitors, Nodar Kumaritashvili from the country of Georgia, died after an accident at the Whistler Sliding Centre during practice. This was to be his Olympic debut - he was only 21 years old.

On Friday night the Opening Ceremonies were held at BC Place in Vancouver. This was a massive event costing $40 million, with over 60000 people there in person and another 23 million watching throughout Canada (out of a population of 33 million - not bad!). We watched it from the comfort of our loungeroom, courtesy of the live streaming at www.ctvolympics.ca. Ah, technology!

The Opening Ceremonies were a major spectacle, complete with native dancers, the Parade of Nations as each country entered, performances by famous singers, tap-dancing and fiddle-playing numbers, incredible special effects, and the lighting of the Olympic cauldron as the 106-day torch relay came to an end.

Australia has 40 athletes at the Winter Olympics, so it was wonderful to see them enter the arena during the Parade of Nations. It was also very moving to watch the small Georgian team walk in, wearing black armbands and with their hands over their hearts, having lost their teammate earlier that day. They received a standing ovation from the crowd. (There was also an official announcement of his death and a minute's silence later in the ceremony.) And of course, the loudest cheering of all was for the entrance of the Canadian team, who marched in last since they are the host nation.

The special effects during the ceremony included a 20m "spirit bear" rising out of the floor, and orcas appearing to swim under the stage floor and spouting water out of their blowholes. There were even the Rocky Mountains with real snowboarders and skiers on them, totem poles that turned into pine trees, and the aurora borealis (northern lights). It is really not possible to put it into words, so if you are interested in watching it, click here!

There was an unfortunate malfunction at the crucial moment just before the cauldron was lit. We were watching the four torchbearers jogging, waving and smiling in the arena and the suspense was dragging on until eventually the voiceover said: "there appears to be a problem... the cauldron is supposed to rise up out of the floor...". Then we saw three large cauldron "arms" start to rise slowly out of the floor, but from the high camera angle it was obvious there was also meant to be a fourth arm, which was not rising. At this point our live feed cut out, as did everyone else's we have talked to, so we actually did not watch the cauldron being lit until a few days later! One of the torchbearers (all former Canadian sporting heroes) ended up being stranded and unable to help light the cauldron (the flames travelled up the arms to the cauldron). Anyway, apart from that embarrassing situation, it was a thoroughly enjoyable ceremony and Canada did themselves proud!

On Saturday morning, we went to Stuart and Rosanne's for an "Olympic brunch", along with a bunch of other friends. (S&R have not featured on this blog for a while as they have been living in London/ working in Turkey for a few months!) We drove there with Janelle and Gerard and Claire - here's a photo of Ben getting Claire fed up before we left their place...



And some photos from the fantastic brunch Stuart and Rosanne hosted...





L-R below: me, Ruth, Myla...


L-R below: John, Rosanne, Shonna, Joel, Stuart...


After a long brunch, we walked to Granville Island and took the Bombardier streetcar (a temporary installment for the Olympics) to Cambie Street. There, as we walked across the bridge, we had this view of the giant Boxing Kangaroo flag hanging from the Aussie team's balconies in the Athletes' Village...





I had only realised that morning that we have our own Boxing Kangaroo flag, which we inherited from Susie when she left! Here it is adorning Claire's stroller...





Some of the crew under the bridge (L-R: Janelle, Ruth, Gerard, Andrew, Ken, Juanita, Helene)...



This was the view across False Creek on this cold, rainy first day of the Olympics (the round building is Science World)...





After walking through a pavillion of Asian food stalls and past a couple of other pavillions (such as the Saskatchewan House, which had a huge line-up!), we queued for about 45 minutes to get into the Russian pavillion, which was in Science World. Russia has the next Winter Olympics - Sochi 2014. The Russians have the very nice policy of letting people with young children skip the queue, so Gerard, Janelle and Claire (along with Andrew and Ken posing as "family") were in long before the rest of us! Here are some photos taken while we were in line...









These protesters were near the front of the line, protesting about the location of the Sochi Olympics apparently being the site of a genocide 150 years ago that has never been acknowledged by the Russian government. There have been a number of protests to do with the Olympics, but the ones getting the media time are the big anti-Olympic protests that have already turned violent twice since Friday. These guys were loud but not violent, and as a result the police at the site could not remove them - much to the irritation of the Russian security I think!!



This quintet then set up a few metres away on the other side of the queue, and managed to somewhat drown out the protesters' chanting with their beautiful singing...



And here are some photos taken inside the pavillion. We saw Russian dancers and musicians, pictures of the Russian landscape, and we watched a documentary about the Russian hockey-like sport of bandy. (I wouldn't say the House of Russia was actually that thrilling - the greatest attraction was that it was dry and warm - but as yet we have no other pavillion to compare it to, so I'll let you know once we have a greater sample size!) Here are some photos from inside...













And Ben captured this shot of a tourist that the Russians were getting their photo taken with (can you see why?)...



After we left the Russian pavillion, the more hard-core members of our group continued on to see a few more sights, but Juanita, Ben and I went back to Gerard and Janelle's and got Indian food delivered while watching the womens' moguls and some speed skating events online. Much more comfortable than lining up for hours in the cold and rain!!

Claire probably thought so too...



And that was our first Olympic weekend! More to come, hopefully!