Green definitely does NOT mean go! So I started writing this blog at exactly 8pm, on 8/8/08. Yep, it’s Olympic time! Over 91 thousand people are packed into the Bird’s Nest. I’ll guess that over 1.5 million are packed onto the Olympic Green, or OCD (Olympic Common Domain), to see the fireworks. Where am I? In my hotel room waiting for a pizza and watching the ceremony on tv…
Five hours ago, I thought it might be fun to get onto the Green to watch the ceremony. Not into the stadium of course, but the Green at least. Five hours would be enough, right? My sticker to designate permission was accidently given to another student, but I thought I’d try. All the other volunteers for NIS were on the Green. Well, after standing in line for 90 minutes at security, I had moved a foot (I’m still 50 ft away from the first checkpoint). And that was the line “for staff”. There were dozens of other lines for ticket holders. And, right when I was questioning whether I wanted to continue standing in the heat and humidity, they decide the line behind us is too long and split it, moving the people behind us next to us. We of course are still filing into the same little gate, but now there’s twice as many people in front of me.
It wasn’t a total waste of time though. Since I was wearing my fashionable blue volunteer uniform, I had probably a dozen westerners come up to me needing assistance. “How do I get to the Green,” they would ask in the slowest voice possible, like I didn’t look American or something. Some were obviously from Europe, so I understand, but someone from Boston should know better… “Well, you have three options: wait in these lines, which will probably take 3 hours or more, ride a bus and wait in another security line, or walk the 2 miles and wait in another security line.” They didn’t seem happy. I guess they assumed the same as I did: five hours would be enough, and Green would mean go. Hehehe.Oh well. TV is better anyways… more close-ups, and I have air conditioning :) Wait till you see this production. If there were any unemployed people in China before, there wasn’t any tonight. The theatrics of it all! I won’t spoil anything, but if you were questioning whether to watch it or not, there should be no option now! I only wish I had NBC to translate it all :)
So, on to tomorrow. Work is amazing. Yesterday we saw podium training, and got our first taste of what it’s like in the Mixed Zone with other journalists. And our first shot of actually wrangling athletes. I still mainly interviewed people of other languages, so I’ll have no clue if they’re used except for maybe like the British. But that’s ok. It’s my job, and I’m loving it! Tomorrow starts men’s followed by women’s qualifications, so every gymnastics star (minus the Hamms of course) will be walking past me. YUM! Hehehe.
