Lighting the Torch

Let the Games begin!

What an incredible event...Apparently the plan Moriah and I made worked! Wave at EVERY American flag and at EVERY camera and we'll make it on NBC. Thanks to the multitude of messages I've received today, NBC caught our excitement at some point in that very long lap, I did not realize how long that track was!

It all started far earlier than what you all saw on TV.

3:00 - eat the last meal and then get ready

5:15 - USA meets to get on the bus to head to our special VIP meeting

??? 7 ish - The Bushes arrive in the Fencing Venue

7:30 ish - Take pics with the President, the former President and the First Lady in our fancy outfits

8 ish (Ok from now on its ish)- arrive in the Gymnastics Venue with all the other teams walking in Opening Ceremonies....They had waters and "food bays" for us including a bread roll, a banana, 2 mini snickers and some chocolate cookie shortbread swirl things (I actually enjoyed them greatly and ate Elsie's). We sat here awhile in the TOP TOP section where the heat and humidity was aquiring, of course. Sweating like CRAZY! This part of Opening Ceremonies is really cool because we get to sit in a huge gym with all the countries participating... from afar, we comment on outfits, find competitors, join or decline to participate in "The Wave" and wait. Eventually, they put video from the beginning of the Ceremony so that we could at least see what was going on while waiting for country no. 139 in the Chinese alphabet. I do NOT understand that since not even all the countries starting with A were next to each other.

9 - We were escorted away from our seats in the clouds and were so glad to finally be moving, but we didn't get far before we hit yet another waiting line! We careened out the Venue and through the open parking lot or plaza (?) and just chilled with the USA delegation for another 40 minutes or so. This is also the time I left the line (yikes!) and gave 3 pins to the Virgin Islands in return for one...I was so generous because I just love that place a lot...anyway my favorite part of walking down the line with women's volleyball, synchro, baseball, beach volleyball, men's soccer, track & field and more was the chanting for Kobe by the throng of volunteers lining the fences. By the way, I have no idea where he was at this point, but he was not visible to the volunteers yet. Anyway, one of the other guys (unfortunately couldn't see who it was) raised his hands to the crowd and the Kobe chants turned into cheers (I'm still not sure if they were just happy to be acknowledged or they were really pumped to see Kobe even though it wasn't him...?).

later - Eventually we made it into the tunnel, this is where the butterflies really set in. We were hugging each other and taking pictures, video, jumping....who knows, but we were so ready to enter that stadium. Our team is so big (596 athletes + any other staff that walked with us) that I didn't even hear the USA team announced, that's how far behind we were! Walking into that stadium was, for me, the final realization that we had made it to the Olympics, the goal we had been looking towards all year and honestly, longer than that for most of us!

That's all I have the energy to divulge at the moment... I will edit this post tomorrow in between practices or afterwards depending on my life to add more details and emotions, whatever.

COMING SOON:
An inside scoop on my team's future employment opportunity AND our special guests at practice this afternoon.