Monday, February 15, 2010

The Games

I'm back! Sorry it took so long to make my first official post after the start of the Games, but I was out and about doing stuff for most (no, all of the weekend). On Saturday I hung around downtown and- OH MY GOD. Vancouver has NEVER looked like this before! It used to be this quiet city that tourists liked because of its peacefulness. Well now there are literally hordes of people moving about everywhere! "It," in the words of a person I talked to on Robson street, "looks just like New York." Is that good? Well, depends on what you like, of course. But I, for one, love New York. It's my second home.

So, if you were a tourist in Vancouver at this time, what would you do? Does flying over Robson Square on a zipline sound like fun? Well, you can do just that IF you're willing to wait SEVEN hours in line! Seven freaking hours! I was all excited about trying out the zipline until I found out about the wait. You'd have to be crazy to waste a day just to spend thirty seconds flying over the square! Then again, the fact that there even IS a seven hour wait speaks for itself. Has everybody gone crazy?

Another fun thing that you can do in the city is check out all of the free concerts. Just today, I was in Granville Island listening to a free Garou Concert. Garou is a Quebecois singer with this amazing bass voice. Sponsored by Air Canada, he gave a free concert. It was a great concert, regardless of the fact that it started to rain halfway through. And guess who was amid the crowd, singing along and waving his arms in the air just like everyone else? Jean Chretien, former Prime Minister of Canada. I managed to sneak a few pictures of him, while he was being interviewed. :) And then I got interviewed myself. What happened is this- when the concert was over everyone started dispersing rapidly, because of the rain. We, however, stayed behind to buy a hot dog. All of a sudden a woman is running up to me, asking "Parlez-vous francais?" So I said yes and she asked if it would be alright if she asked me a couple of questions for a CTV news special that she was working on. So she recorded me teling her tape recorded what I thought of the concert. Cool, cool. I've never really been interviewed before.

And then of course there are the non-free concerts, like the Victory Ceremonies. But the cost is relatively cheap($20-$50). I went to the Nelly Furtado one with my colleagues from Students Live. I would definitely recommend going- you get to watch the athletes get their medals AND listen to some great music. Only thing is, you'll be out of your seats many a time, because the national anthem of the country of the person that won a gold medal will be played each time the winners are announced. :)

OLYMPIC NEWS:

Protesters have been going at it, breaking windows and splashing paint all over the sidewalk on Granville Street near the Bay. In fact, a twenty-four hour glass repair company has been hired to be there at all times, fixing whatever the protesters decide to break.

Tickets to the Gold Medal Hockey Game currently cost $3,500. Prices are expected to rise. That's more than a ticket to the opening ceremonies. That's enough for a freaking car. A pretty crappy car, I'll give you that, but still. What kind of audience are they trying to sell those tickets to? Because from what I know, an average person does not have three thousand dollars to spare.

Canada won its first ever gold medal on native soil. Alexandre Bilodeau, the Montreal native, managed to get first place, beating out all of the other competitors.

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