Article for 13-02-2006

Olympic Transformation

In just the past two weeks this city has undergone some serious changes. My teacher explained it best when she spoke of Italians putting the word “procrastinate” in “procrastinator.” Four days before the Olympics began, when my class was inquiring about the amount of work still in progress; our teacher said, “Don’t worry there are still four days left!” We laughed a bit when we thought about the fact that Torino has had five years to prepare for this event and they are still hard at work in the last four days. On the way home from school I saw them cleaning, planting, building, and finishing final preparations. They were cutting it pretty close to the deadline but my teacher was right, everything that needed to get done was done.

The Olympics have been in full swing for three days now and the amount of people in this city has apparently quadrupled. That’s not an actual figure, but I feel like it has to be close. Torino has 1.7 million residents and the Olympics were said to bring in an additional 2 million people. Today as I was trying to make my way home, I was caught in a pack of people barely moving on one of the big streets in Torino. Two of my friends who had tickets to two different events yesterday left fairly early to get to the competition site but arrived so late that they completely missed one event and were late for the other. I know there are trains running every half hour from the station and charter buses to transport spectators to the site which seems like a lot, but when you’re dealing with this many people you can’t cover everything.

Another great part of the Olympics is that Torino is putting on its finest for the occasion. For instance, Torino is famous for a chocolate festival that is held for two weeks in March. Since the Olympics are here they have decided to have the chocolate festival twice and what can be better than that.

Also, if anyone caught a glimpse of The Today Show on Friday, the UP was well represented. Anna Myers and Mandy Leap and their “Say yah to da UP, eh?” poster made it on national, maybe even international television. I was hanging out in the background along with some other Tech students but Anna and Mandy got the interview! J So if you think about it, turn on The Today Show and maybe we’ll make another appearance.

As for recent events, we stood in line today for 2.5 hrs to see if we could get some free tickets to the medals ceremony this evening. And we totally did! There was some local Torino artists performing followed by the medals ceremony. We saw the medals given to the women’s freestyle mogul winners, the 5,000-meter speed skating events and the men’s halfpipe. Three Americans received medals and the whole experience was amazing. We were probably about 50 yards away from the stage. After the medals we watched Kelly Clarkson, the evening performer, before heading home for some food.

All in all, the Olympics have been amazing. I’ll be sure to keep everybody updated. Till then, watch for me on TV! J