The day of the Opening Ceremony

I keep getting emails about how cool the Opening Ceremony was. Geat to know! Now seriously, you'd think that being here and all I should know the best, but I really did not get to experience any of it until our team walked into the stadium. In other words, we missed the whole show (we were at the indoor gymnastics venue waiting and though they had screens there, they were showing flags of different countries instead.... Every now and then they would show a little bit of the show just to interupt it by the flag display, which was always followed by the intense booing).

However, just as I was starting to feel like I missed out, we were in the tunnel leading up to the Olympic Stadium and I could feel the excitement building and culminating. When we finally walked from the dark tunnel into the stadium, the waiting seemed all worth it. I just tried to soak in the atmoshphere so I could remember the feeling forever....

The night was long, I did not make it back to my room until 1:15 am so I am feeling quite tired today. I am off to recover and will try to post something again tomorrow.



Slaven (a decathlete) with two great Slovakian swimmers... (Martina Moravcova on the left is a two time Olympic silver medalist)



Before leaving the Olympic village - with Slaven who qualified in the decathlon-he got his qualifier to the point. One point less (could be as little as a few centimeters in one of the jumping events or a few seconds in the last 1500m race....)

In the shuttle, on the way to the Opening Ceremony

With others on the Slovak team and a volunteer

While waiting I came acroos Rubin McRae (the New Zealand team)-a friend from the Western State College....




The back of Coby Bryant's head....




Outside of the gymnastic venue, waiting in line for marching toward the stadium




And just before the most magical moment of the night: walking into the Olympic stadium




Branca's photo of the march taken in Vancouver




Was he sweating or what?




These outfits looked really warm....

Athletes from Somalia, Netherlands...






Inside the stadium waiting for all the countries to march in....






The Fire Lighting Part.... I mean, seriously, is this the best one ever or what?






And it's time to go home....