And so I’m here and it’s been an incredibly long day! I have done a lot today and the day certain feels like it has lasted forever (if 20 hours is forever, then it has).
Coming in for Landing
5:00am EST I woke up and headed to the Royal York in Toronto to hop on the airport shuttle to Pearson. Security & Check-In wasn’t bad at all (as you’ll know by reading my previous post) and the plane ended up leaving on time, joy! The fight was great, no turbulence and good views of North Dakota and Montana (sarcasm intended). When we landed in Vancouver I pulled out my cellphone to turn it on, only to find that I had somehow turned it on in my pocket and that it had been on for the duration of the flight (maybe I never turned it off?). I’m thinking tomorrow if I get the chance I’ll call rogers and explain how I managed to stay on my phone while visiting two countries (3 provinces and 3 states) within 4 hours.
10:15am PST I met up with my friend Cassie who I will be staying with at the airport and we grabbed my bags and headed into town. Her house is not too far from the airport so it was a short little commute. After getting out of the airport, it was awesome to breathe in the air. I think it’s probably something like 50% mental and 50% actual that the air here smells and feels cleaner than back in Ontario. Did I mention it was about +10 and full sun? It only lasted until mid-afternoon but I felt like it was the middle of April, it was great!
A neat sculpture outside the Vancouver Art Gallery
The Massive Canadian Flag you keep seeing on TV
11:30am PST Cassie, her boyfriend Sean and I headed downtown to check out Robson street and all of the attractions. There is TONS to do here, I failed to realize that only half of the olympics involves sport. There seem to be “houses” from every country, and province of Canada, all over the place. It is very much like I would’ve assumed the old world’s fairs of Expo’s to have been like. We’ve yet to actually go into a house, but that is something we’ll surely be doing. After trolling around for a bit we headed over to pick up my uniform.
My Volunteer Uniform
2:30pm PST What they tell you about East Vancouver is true. The bus we had to take to get us to the uniform pickup location was…interesting and the sights we saw were, out of this world. That is all you need to know – if you don’t believe me, just ask, I have stories. The Uniform pick up was smooth – except for the fact they were “out” of all men’s sizes. As the guy told me, 24,600 of the 25,300 volunteers had already gone through. Luckily I was able to convince him to go see if anyone had returned anything and he manged to find me the perfect sizes; my jacket is Large, vest is Small and pants are Medium – and people as why I have trouble fitting into clothes.
A Vancouver to Victoria waterplane with the olympic rings in the background.
4:00pm PST After picking up my uniform we headed to Gastown which Cassie told me was like “old vancouver”. It was pretty touristy, but was very nice to walk around in. By this point in the afternoon it had started to cloud over, but I was still able to manage in just a fleece jacket, it was great. We walked all the way down to the International Press Centre (IPC) and the Canada Pavillion where the torch was located. I also happened to run into one of the ref’s that used to ref for me back at the University Intramural Department. It was really cool to just run into someone completely out of the blue – I’m always humbled at how small the world can be sometimes. I know this post is picture filled already, but there are two pictures here I wanted to share, one of the waterplanes dock with the olympic rings out on the barge and one of the torch.
The olympic torch in clear view through the fence.
I figured showing it closer to its true size was most appropriate…..
6:00pm PST Eventually we headed home. Cassie had some friends over for a bit but everyone headed downtown for one of their friends’ birthday’s and now I’m off to bed. I’ve got my first shift tomorrow at 9am and will need to get up at 7am to give myself time to head out to the venue. I was expecting to have to get up at 6 but was really happy to see that there was a bus route nearly directly from Cassie’s house to Canada Hockey Place!
Oh, and I had three people ask to take a picture of my hair today (for those of you that don’t know, I got the olympic rings shaved into the side of my head – picture to come). It is starting to grow over already (it’s only been since thursday!) so Cassie’s going to try tomorrow to trim it up.
Good night for now everyone! Hopefully I’ll have a lot more to fill you in on tomorrow when I actually get to work!
Go Canada Go!
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