Pre-dress rehearsal

Yesterday was the pre-dress rehearsal for the opening ceremonies. I signed a confidentiality agreement so I cant tell you anything about it, But I can tell you a bit about my day and first volunteer shift. I showed up a while before my shift actually started since we have to go through the ''mag & bag'' (magnetometer), which went pretty quickly but our volunteer jackets have too many metal zippers! We were then given a card with a country ( I was Greece) in the volunteer check in tent. We then made our way to the plaza to wait to be let into BC place. Our country card assigned us to a random group for today's shift, since there are different jobs, that way you get to do different things at each shift. I ended up on the 4^th floor of GM place as an usher. So I got to direct people to their seats. We got a bit familiar with our sections and what would be going on. Today's performance was for friends/family of opening ceremonies performers.

The hard part about the practice is keeping it all secret. In this age of iphones, camera phones and video phones it is really hard to control what people do. That was my other task, make sure people were not filming or taking pictures. It is extremely hard to control since people are constantly talking/texting or doing other stuff on their phone. And people were thrown out of the rehearsal for doing the above mentioned stuff. I really hope no one spoils the secrets and reveals them to the media. I think Vancouver is dealing with a problem that other Olympic games have not had to deal with do to the large increase in social media. My fingers are crossed, some secrets are best kept till the real deal!

There are some funny things I can tell you! Obviously not everything was done at the rehearsal, the important people giving speeches were not there, instead of them, volunteers stood in and read paragraphs about the history of the city of Vancouver (the name originates from the dutch! Vankooverden, meaning from the dutch town of Kooverden) for the length of time the important people would speak. Another person talked about the history of the Olympic rings logo.

It was a long night with lots of standing and searching for cameras but it was worth it, I cant wait till Friday, for the real thing and the lighting of the cauldron, its going to be really emotional to be there and see it lit in person.