13 Feb

No class today so, as expected, I slept in a bit and took it easy. I did some more work for my linguistics project and some serious tidying up of my room (my desk was a mess). I rather piddled about until dinner at 6. The mushroom stroganoff wasn’t terribly thrilling but company as usual rescued the meal. After dinner I found out from Gregg that the BBC has live streaming video of the Olympics, so I proceeded to watch pairs figure skating and women’s snowboarding for, I’ll admit it, the next three hours. I can’t help it; I just the Olympics and always have.

The Chinese pairs team that won the silver had perhaps the best display of sportsmanship and athleticism I’ve seen in a while. The woman goes into an awful looking splits and crash into the boards after a botched toss that was aiming for a quadruple jump. Quads are near impossible for women to begin with, and off a toss it’s incredibly risky. The pair managed to pull one off in the short program or during practice and figured they could do it again. After the fall, the woman couldn’t even propel herself off the ice. She rested for a few minutes and, much to the surprise of the BBC announcers, came back out onto the ice with her partner and they continued their program from where they left off (you’re allowed to do this). She landed perfectly all of her jumps and technically they were amazing enough to warrant the silver medal. They were the last act of the night for skating and it was incredible.

This is why I love the Olympics.

Snowboarding came on after that and, as expected, the American women dominated the top while a Norwegian managed just to squeeze into third place. Still a good show even though the outcome was more predictable than most (except maybe the constant German domination in luge). I talked to my folks for a bit, and then did some more note-taking for my war studies essay before going to bed. Cheers!