Hello!

I missed blogging yesterday as I went to see the opening ceremony dress rehearsal and we got home late. As a volunteer, I got 1 free ticket to see the opening ceremony and I could purchase 1 additional ticket. So I took Rebecca with me, the lady I am staying with.

All I can say is "watch the opening ceremonies" or tape it because I thought it was spectacular. They asked us not to spill the beans about what it was all about as they want it to be a surprise for the 3 billion viewers from around the world that will watch it. The headliners were great also.

Yesterday, I had some "venue" training to attend up at Cypress Mountain; which means they orient you to the mountain and where everything is located. No one can drive up to the mountain so they have "olympic" buses that pick us up in North Vancouver. It was neat to be on a bus with all volunteers in our uniforms! (picture of uniform soon to come I hope, I need Rebecca's husband Scott to help me download them) All the volunteers are very friendly; I met a man from Ottawa. There are 500 volunteers from the Ottawa area at the olympics.

It was a bit bittersweet seeing the mountain, bitter in that lots of the mountain had grass showing; like it looks on ski hills in May at home. The "sweet" was how spectacular the freestyle and snowboard course look! There is snow there as they have trucked in at least 400 dump trunk loads of snow from as far away as 250 kilometres. There were dump trunks constantly arriving and leaving for more snow. The mountain was a "buzz" trying to prepare for opening day on Saturday. (my first shift) There were many helicopters flying around with buckets of snow they were dumping on the hill. Just after we all arrived, it started to snow and there was a big cheer!

Today I have 2 more hours of training to attend. It's about how to do all the aspects of my job. They will have us doing something different every day so we don't get bored! I may have to do crowd control which everyone laughs at...knowing how aggressive I can be!

Tomorrow Rebecca and Scott (my house hosts) are having an "olympic opening ceremony party" . They are a young couple (relative to me) age 35, and their 2 boys are ages 2 & 5. Get this..they have invited 6 other couples who each have 2 kids under the age of 6. My math says there will be 14 kids here under the age of 6......... Will report on that later....

Hope all is well at home. Take care. We'' ll talk soon.

Marianne