Olympic madness!

A whole year on from the Olympics and I finally manage to sit down and write a little about the incredible experience I had as an NOC assistant at the Games in London 2012.  

So, I guess I start at the beginning.  I was assigned to be the lead assistant (there were three of us in total) for the Democratic Republic of Congo.  The reason? I speak fluent French.  However I was soon to learn that the French spoken by the people of this fascinating African nation is not quite the same as the French I know and speak every day.  I knew from the moment I opened my little envelope telling me I would be working with COD (The Olympic code for the DRC), that it was going to be a challenge but also an excellent learning opportunity.  I could not have been more right!

Anyway, what was my job? An NOC is essentially the whole team who come from one country, so we were all assigned to different countries for the duration of their stay in the UK.  What we did changed daily as we were there to help them with whatever they wanted doing.  Whether that be taking them on shopping trips (these were my favourite days), getting them tickets to events, making sure the athletes did everything they needed to, or driving them to Manchester for the day to see the football stadiums (this was not my favourite day!).  I have to admit I really liked the variety and uncertainty.  I am a super organised person who generally plans my days to the hour, so coming in in the morning and having no idea what was going to happen was quite exciting.  It was tough at times because we were expected to know a lot about the working of the games.  Whereas other volunteers only had to know about their area, we had to know it all!  We also had to get used to working on Africa Time which often meant a lot of sitting around waiting on them.

A big part of my job ended up being driving.  This was certainly an interesting experience having never driven around London and never driven a car other than my little KA.  We were assigned two LOCOG cars... a BMW 5 series (aka boat) and a Citroen Picasso (aka mum car).  At first I hated going out in the cars as London driving is mental and they felt huge... I genuinely felt like I was driving a boat around the city.  After a while though I got used to them and actually this was one of the biggest learning curves of the experience.  I am now much happier driving around and even made it back from Durham in a hire car with no tears!

I was team leader so had to coordinate with the Chef de missions (head of the NOC) from the DRC and had to manage the other volunteers assigned to the team.  This was often easier said than done as the Congolese are a very relaxed nation, so our instructions or requirements for the following day were given last minute.  I ended up having my Olympic phone on me at all times, even on days off as the Chef would call whenever he had a question.  The two guys I worked with were great and we had a good laugh together. We worked very long days for six weeks from the day the team arrived to when they left after the closing ceremony.  Then you add on the fact that my journey in from home was about an hour and a half on a good day, I was pretty shattered but wouldn't change the experience.

Another good point about our role was that weren't always needed by our country so we sometimes had time off which allowed me to explore the Olympic park and sneak into several events including Super Saturday!!!  When we weren't chilling we sometimes got the opportunity to work with teams from other countries so I ended up working with France, Peru, Germany, Holland, the USA and Nigeria. Being able to speak 4 languages certainly came in handy!!

Highlights include:

- Being an athlete for the final dress rehearsal for the Opening Ceremony.  They needed people to do the walk from the village to the stadium and then do the lap of honour for timings, so all of the NOC assistants got to take part.  This was an AMAZING experience, one I can't quite put into words, but I will never forget it.  We were joined by some of the army and we had a fabulous evening.
 
- Handing the water bottles to our (COD) marathon runner at drinks station A.  I was stood in the stand with other athletes from other countries and got to witness the marathon up close.

- Working in the Athletes village.  We would walk around and just see all of these amazing athletes walking around, chilling.  It was very inspirational and certainly made me dust off my trainers.  We ended up seeing people like Tom Daly and Rebecca Adlington a lot and it became very normal!

- Getting a load of texts as the other Congo appeared at the Opening Ceremony and having to reply that I worked with the other Congo so they had to wait for the Ds.

I will never forget the summer or my final day when I spent four hours in the evening translating for the police.  Yes four members of my NOC escaped and were on the news (much to my friend's amusement) so on the final day I translated for the investigating team.  BUT I grew very fond of the team and hope they are all well in the DRC. That is all for now, but when I look through my Olympic diary I am sure another post could appear with more stories!

 The COD Team :D

 TEAM COD!

 Opening Ceremony dress rehearsal night 

 My pass - note the bit that says ALL :P It means access all areas!

 Dress rehearsal Congolese team

 The walk to the stadium!

 In the stadium after the lap of honour!!

Walking to the stadium on the real Opening Ceremony night.  We had to escort the team!

The Beginning

As my last blog post was entitled 'The End' it only seems appropriate that my return to the world of blogging be entitled 'The Beginning'! I have not written anything for a while, which makes me sad, but is due to the crazy crazy life I have had in my fourth year. My next post will be a short summary of everything I did and should give an example of the life that can be lead by a fourth year linguist at Durham... not a fourth year wanting a first, but a fourth year wanting to enjoy life and organise a million and one things!

I have started this blog up again as this summer I am going to be a volunteer at the Olympics in London and I would like to write about it on here.  Whilst there are lots of restrictions on what we can/can't write and upload, I would like to share my experience.  I am going to be an NOC Assistant.  An NOC is a National Olympic Committee and is made up of all of the athletes and officials from a country competing in the games.  Next month I will find out which country I am attached to and then for the five weeks they are in London I will be working 6 days on and one day off and will be looking after them. The number of assistants depends on the size of the delegation, for example a small African nation which only has 10 athletes may just have 2 or 3 NOC assistants whereas the USA which is a delegation of about 600 will have the maximum 12 assistants.

So far I have had four training sessions and one general session.  They have all been in London which has involved a lot of early morning trains from Durham but have been worth it.  The excitement after every session is inexplicable and especially yesterday as there are now only 100 days to go until the games.

Anyway, I am not going to write anymore now but my adventures at the Olympics will be documented here! :)

THE END

Because of the type of person I am I cannot write this blog out of order... it will annoy me and seeing as I have a few posts from recent events lined up, I need to write this conclusion to my year abroad before moving on!  So here it is, a few facts and figures about my year abroad to amuse you all!

Total number of plane journeys: 21
Total number of countries lived in: 3
Total number of countries visited: 10

Average temperature (Austria) :  Somewhere between 5 and -10 (on bad days -20!!)
Average temperature (Spain) : 25-35
Average temperature (France) : 25-30
Conclusion? - I loved having proper seasons so doing a winter country in winter and then a really hot one from February onwards was a great plan - although it was a bit of a shock to the system!  I honestly cannot say which I preferred...

Average wake up time (Austria) - 5am
Average wake up time (Spain) - 8/9am
Average wake up time (France) - 7am
Conclusion? I do waking up early pretty well - in fact I would rather get up early!

I took only one small and one large suitcase to each destination and only ever paid for 4 kilos of excess luggage (coming home from Spain).

My purse got stolen twice but I never lost anything vitally important.  The loss of something special someone gave me, hurt me more than anything else.

I made 2 surprise trips back to England - one to Durham and one home.

I went the whole year with only a mini hairbrush and no hairdryer.

English is a ridiculous language to learn, not from a grammatical point of view ( Austrian pupils 'you have only one gender pfft!') but from a pronunciation point of view.  Think wind & wind....though, thought, through, tough etc etc

Things I have learnt:

- It is ok to be self-confident.  Whilst before I always thought self-confidence (not that I am always confident! :P) would be perceived as arrogance, I now know that it is not. There is a big difference.  Self-confidence is knowing you can do something and doing it, arrogance is talking about knowing you can do it and rubbing it in people's faces!

- Asking for things is ok.  I have always found asking for what I want hard... now it is much less of an issue!

 - I can now stand up for myself a bit better.  I was never a massive push over, but sometimes I will stay quiet rather than say what I want to.  I still do this, but when I really care I may now say something!

 - Germanic cultures suit me better than Latin ones.  However living in Spain has definitely taught me to value being a little more relaxed about life.  There are things worth getting worried and stressed about, but most are not worth it - life is too short.

These are just a few little comments!  The year abroad was a truly amazing experience and a genuine opportunity to see Europe and get by alone.  I certainly learnt a lot that cannot be taught or read in a text book.  Most importantly I met some fabulous people along the way.  Some I may never speak to again but the time I spent with them has enriched my life and some I know I will speak to for a long time, wherever they may be!

THE END

To be continued...

As you can see my blog has been completely neglected throughout the summer.  I would like to say this is because I have been off on so many adventures around the world that I had no time to write.  One half of that sentence is true... I haven't really had any time to write this summer, but mainly because I was at home and found myself being much busier than expected.

I am not going to write a big post now, but felt a short one saying I will be back was necessary.  So watch this space!

Blogs to follow

As you may have seen I have just updated the blogs listed on this page... some are good friends of mine and others are just blogs I like reading so you might too!  Blogging is such an odd concept to me and I am still getting my head round it, but nonetheless I love reading them!

Happy reading!

They don't do tables for one

Reading other blogs made me realise I should really update my own seeing as it has been a while.  I am now in France and am having a wonderful time discovering the world of working full time.  I am actually really enjoying it so am happy happy happy :D

I arrived after just a few hours in the UK and was welcomed by my granddad (papy).  I flew to Girona and was one of the 6 non-Barcelona supporters on the flight.  As it was the early morning flight from Luton the morning after the final with Manchester United, we were surrounded by blue and maroon shirts.  They even treated us to a song as we landed, which made a nice change from the normal Ryanair fanfair!

Work is really interesting and I have lovely colleagues so I haven't even seen the last 4 weeks fly by.  I start at 9 every day and then finish at 6 or 7 depending on the timetable.  It took a bit of getting used to after having had so much free time in Spain but I am loving it.  It is a little insight into what the future might be like.
 

So, the job itself.  I am working in a tourism office and spend most of my time at 'l'acceuil', so talking to tourists (in all four languages!!) and advising them what they can do in the town, department and region.  We get a whole range of questions so every day presents me with new challenges.  I also help out with sorting out the post and emails and of course answer the phone.  It is really interesting switching between my languages so much, sometimes having to go from one to the other within seconds.  Good brain training I think!

There are a couple of other stagiaires too and as Lena has the same lunch hours as me we spend our time discovering the different places to eat in the town centre and also visiting things when we can.  I will do another blog post soon explaining our visits and a bit more about the town and what I have been up to with la famille.

I hope this keeps you all going for now!  The title of this blog comes from one of my lunch dates in the first couple of weeks, when the waiter asked me how many people the table was for and I said 'For one!' and he jokingly replied  'Well we don't do tables for one.'  I was, as you can imagine, not terribly amused.  Ah well, it has been fun lunching alone and being able to observe the people and the world going by...

Adios

So I am now in France and it is time to reflect upon my time in Spain.  It was so so different to my 5 months in Austria and I have to say I hadn't prepared myself for the culture shock at all.  The shock is bad enough when going from your own country and culture to a new one and when you have enough time to prepare for it.  So the fact that I was moving from a culture other than my own to a new one made it more difficult and I also only spent 48 hours at home in between. 

My time in Spain was certainly more challenging than Austria, but was equally enriching and my Spanish improved hugely.

I think the main point to make is that I am less suited to a country like Spain.  Despite having Spanish blood in my veins I am not made for their laid back ways.  I am most certainly a morning person so the fact that they tend to stay up late and get up late morning is not really me.  I am also someone who is fairly ‘why wait if you can do it now’, so the ‘mañana mañana’ attitude also took some getting used to.

All this said I had a lovely time and have some very fond memories.  I met a whole range of people; from the business man I taught English to, to my wonderfully welcoming housemates and feel like I benefitted enormously from the experience.  The things I will miss most:

·      My weekly chats with the fabulous lady at the post office :D

·      The weather – seriously 4 months of sunshine!! I even have a pretty good tan going, which for me is very impressive!

·      The time to do things and appreciate what is going on around me.

·      Teaching lessons in the sunshine everyday on the plaza.

·      French lessons with Esther – the most wonderful French teacher at the university.

·      The city of Madrid itself.  I really like it as a capital and think people don’t give it enough credit.

·      Chinese Fridays with my friends.

·      Making Sangria with my housemates.

Spain, at times you were massively interesting, but I am glad I lived there.  4 months I will never forget…

The End.