Vive La France

I love France. I love their champagne and I love Paris. Like most Americans, however, I definitely chuckled when the Simpsons referred to the French as "cheese eating surrender monkeys." I enjoy jokes about the French battle flag being a white cross on a white background. I didn't expect the French to join in on the joke by showing up to the Olympics wearing chicken hats.

At all the venues, I've seen French fans wearing chicken hats like that one. Apparently it is supposed to be a french cockerel, the national symbol of France. I'm sticking with chicken hat.

Olympic Update

There have been a lot of pretty amazing moments at the Olympics so far, but here are my top 5 favorite things.

5. The crazy fans. The archery finals had fans dressed as Robin Hood. The Brazilians wear crazy green and yellow wigs. The French wear chicken hats. (Not even fun to make fun of... too easy.) Plus the American fans are pretty star spangled.

4. Volleyball. The beach volleyball is basically one big party complete with a dance squad. The beach volleyball is being played in a temporary stadium set up in central London a block from 10 Downing Street. Poor David Cameron must not be getting any sleep as volleyball fans are screaming "Ole!" until past midnight every night.

The indoor volleyball is also fantastic. We got to meet some of the players, including setter Don Suxho. It made me feel pretty tall.

3. The 100m men's final- Usain Bolt... fastest man in the world. This was right before the race.

2. Gabby Douglass winning the gymnastics all around final. She's 16 and moved to Iowa to train when she was 14. Iowa. That's dedication.

1. Michael Phelps. Watching him swim in Beijing and again in London has been incredible. I saw every one of his races in London and got teary eyed after his last gold. It's the end of an era but it sure has been fun.

Opening Ceremonies

We've been having so much fun that I haven't had any time to blog, so here's the update. We arrived at Opening Ceremonies at 7pm as the tickets indicated that it started at 7:30pm. We were so excited!

When we took our seats, there was an agrarian scene with cows, horses, and sheep. Volunteers were walking around giant balloon clouds.

Opening ceremonies then proceeded to start an hour and a half late. By the time it was about to start, apparently some PETA type people were concerned that the animals had been kept out too long, so the majority of them were removed from the stage. 

I'm going to have to rewatch the opening ceremonies when I get home, since a lot of it was pretty confusing from the audience. For example, why was Voldemort battling Mary Poppins?

What was going on with all of those people dancing around that house? Does anyone actually like the NHS? That said, Paul McCartney singing Hey Jude, the James Bond/ Queen Elizabeth video, and David Beckham looking mostly perfect in a suit with the Olympic torch made up for all of rest. And of course the fireworks were glorious.