One of our classes while we're here is called London Walks, and all we have to do is go on walks around London and then write down what we think is cool or interesting about it. Yesterday, for one of our walks, we went on a guided tour of the Olympic sites! Our tour guide was this funny old guy who said he was born in Ireland, even though he had a British accent. When we go on walks we're supposed to take notes in our little notebooks called commonplace books, but I forgot mine, so I took out a scrap piece of paper to write on. My scrap piece of paper I found in the bottom of my bag was a map for the Louvre, which I think is pretty funny!
Our guide told us about these camera shots called honey shots. They're those shots where there's a break in the game, and the camera roams around the fans and stays on one person for a few seconds. Our tour guide, Tom, told us that these shots are called honey shots. Well, they want the people at the games to be attractive to make London look good, so everyone is given an "attractiveness" number, which is put on the end of their Visa card. When anyone applies for a ticket to the games, their bank is contacted so they can look up their "attractiveness" number! You have to have a certain number to be able to get into the games! Isn't that crazy? He said that the number for synchronized swimming is low, like 2 or 3, but you have to have a pretty high number for the races. I actually don't know if I believe that, but everyone else thinks it's true, so I guess it must be! My professor, Nick, said, "So what does it mean if the last number on my card is 9?" Ha!
Our guide told us that London's been getting ready for the Olympics for the last five years. The games were supposed to be in Paris, but Tom told us that at the big conference where all the delegates voted on the location, the Paris delegate whispered to the guy next to him, "Good thing the games aren't in London, because the only food that's worse than English food is food in Finland!" Unfortunately for the Paris delegate, the delegate from Finland was standing right behind him. Hence, the games are in London! Again, I don't know how much of this is factual, but it's funny :) Tom told us that the reason the marathon is still in miles instead of being in the metric system, is because of the Queen of England during the 1908 Olympics. She wanted the marathon to go past a school so that the kids could see the people running, and the course for the marathon ended up being exactly 26.2 miles, and it's just stayed that way.
The Olympics are going to be in the East End of London, which is the poorer and more ghetto part of London. They're having the Olympics here to get money into the East End to try and fix it up. On our walk through the sites I wasn't super impressed by the area. It does't look like they've done a lot of cleaning up, but maybe in the next three months they'll get a lot done. On the site where they built the actual stadium, Tom said they found 6 unexploded WWII bombs, and 4 bodies!! Crazy stuff! Random facts about the stadium: The stadium fits about 80,000 people. A hotel room that normally costs $40 by the Olympic stadium will cost about $750 on opening night. NBC has been here for the past 6 months getting ready to film the Olympics. The Olympic village where the athletes will stay has 17,000 flats, and later will be used as a school and medical center. They really are trying to pour money into this thing to try and fix the East End up. It will be interesting to see if it works! Tom said it will take about 10 years to see the results though, so we'll just have to wait and see!
Yesterday night, we went and saw the play War Horse. They had a life-size puppet horse that was actually really cool! It took a little bit to get used to watching a huge puppet horse being operated by three guys ha, but they made it work. If you've ever seen Lion King, it was like the opening scene where all the animals come out. They made the horse move and sound like an actual horse. It was a good play! I've never seen the movie, but I think the play follows the same plot line. I'll have to watch the movie when I get home!
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