Opening Ceremonies

By Brianne McLaughlin

The last few days have been pretty much a whirlwind. A few days ago we had a chance to sleep in a little bit so I tried to take advantage of that. Around 9 I got woken up by loud music and drums so I walked out onto the balcony and they had flag raising ceremonies for a few of the countries. The voice on the microphone was so familiar though. Within seconds half of my team was on their balconies with cameras...it was Christina Yang on Grey's Anatomy! I love that show I was so excited. So we got dressed and went down to the stage and she popped down from the stage and got pictures with us. She was really nice.

Our flag raising ceremony was the next day but we had practice so we missed it. I've gotten a chance to meet a lot of the other USA athletes. It's so funny because none of us actually know each other but whenever you see someone in USA your automatically best friends and strike up a random conversation. We have a lounge area to play cards or Wii so me and a team mate go down there to get in some intense rounds of mario brothers daily. We've met a lot of people that way.

Gigi (my mario brother) has been writing into Ellen Degeneres and sending in pictures of us with a life size Ellen head doing Olympic things. Well, one of Ellen's helpers emailed Gigi back and they sent us a package with a flip camera, pictures, and flags of Ellen so we can take her with us and send her everything. Were hoping she brings us on the show ha. We took Ellen to openning ceremonies yesterday and got pictures with New Zealand, Argentina, and some other countries. We made some foreign friends too that way.

Okay, okay, OPENNING CEREMONIES!!

It was incredible. I had so much fun getting into our outfits with the rest of the girls. We got into a big USA group and took some pictures outside with all 216 of us. Waiting around in the building once we got there all in all was about 4 hours before we walked. But that was kind of my favorite part. Apparently every olympics it's a big fight who gets to go last and my team (hockey) has been pushed up to second to last the past two years.

Our older girls were determined to not get pushed around this year. So there we were head to head with the snowboarding team and they may have out numbered us. We thought we were being sneaky by lining up a few sections back in the hallway. Suddenly the coed snowboarding team was missing. They outsmarted us and we found them one section further than us hiding in the womens bathroom! The volunteers were trying to make sure everything goes smoothly, then theres two USA teams linked arms playing chicken trying to hold their ground. So I'm sure they weren't happy. Eventually we got one of the cops on our side and they forced the snowboarders forward. VICTORY.

Once all 216 of us were together in order we were placed in sync to our marching position. This was my favorite part. Were all in the tunnel waiting to walk out all hudled together and one of the bobsledders starts a USA chant. It was the coolest feeling. Here we are all complete strangers but these next few weeks were one big team representing more than just us all in the red, white, and blue. Then we were sent out into the arena with the flashes and screaming. My parents were somewhere in the sea of white which made it impossible to even begin to spot them, but it was amazing knowing they were there. I'm sure everyone saw the ceremony so I don't have to explain how cool that was although I'll post some pictures. Today I went to the speed skating which was way cooler than I expected it. I had never seen speed skating before but it's incredible how fast they go. Since I'm watching it now on TV no one knows what happens so I'll leave it at that!