Saturday, August 9, 2008

I couldn't stop watching

Did anyone else watch the Opening Ceremony of the Olympics last night!?!?!

At first, I wasn't really into it, but after about 10 minutes, I was amazed! I couldn't stop watching. I'm not sure if I could pick a favorite portion of the ceremony. Here are some of my favorites:

  • The LED floor with the dancers doing the painting with their hands and feet.
  • The drummers at the very beginning. Very cool!
  • The men doing Tai Chi ... those circles were perfect!
  • The dancers walking around the latitude lines of the globe (side note: I wish I had a video clip of this to show my kiddos the difference between latitude and longitude lines).
  • The printing blocks that made wave and ripple motions.
  • The footprint fireworks "walking" down the main street to the stadium at the beginning.
  • The lime green lit costumes.
Fun facts I heard while watching:
  • 87 of the 204 present countries have never won a medal at the Olympics. In some cases, the Olympians that perform in the first events will lose and then leave to go home immediately.
  • The printing blocks had people inside them to move. Pretty amazing since I thought for sure these were hooked up electronically to move.
  • There were 15,000+ performers. None of them performed twice, so once their "dance" was over, they were done. When someone asked why they had so many performers it was said, "Well, we have the people!"
  • The stadium was built "around" the opening ceremonies.
  • Most of the opening "scenes" had 2008 performers.
  • I believe they said that LED floor was the largest LED screen in the world (147 x 22 meters).
  • There were 47 different sets of costumes.
  • The "globe walkers" trained for 8 months, with the hardest job being on those that had to walk around the Equator.
  • All the volunteers for the ceremony began rehearsing in March of 2008.
  • Greece is always the first country in the Parade of Nations and the host country is always the last. All other nations march "alphabetically" according to the host nation's written language. In 2004, Greece went both first and last.
If you didn't get a chance to watch, you should do a little google imaging online, but here is the link to the main Olympic Games site with many slideshows. [HERE]
I also found some more great pictures HERE and HERE!

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1 comment:

RachelC said...

I'm glad to know that I wasn't the only person who spent a Friday night watching the ceremony. The number of performers was awe-inspiring, but they do have the largest population... I always love watching the countries with small groups of athletes. They're just so proud to be there. Can you imagine waiting in the center of the stadium through the hours of the procession? Where's the bathroom?

I thought the gymnast who lit the torch was pretty amazing.