My friend Rachel called me Friday night to invite me to swimming. I was very excited to go because it was very difficult to get tickets to the Water Cube. Swimming is my favorite Olympic sport.

 

Normally, the prelims are in the mornings and the finals are in the evenings. However, NBC petitioned to the IOC International Olympic Committee to change the finals to the mornings so that it would be LIVE in the East Coast. When you pay $900 million USD just for the rights to broadcast the Games you get a lot of pull.

 

I was sportin' the American spirit. I wore 3 strands of USA beaded necklace and the USA flag in my ponytail.

 

We walked around taking loads of pictures and soaking up the atmosphere. The concessions were a bit odd. Eggs were on the menu?!?? (Last item on menu) Who thought eggs would be a good item for concessions??? Olympic organizers definitely could improve on the food choices. Granted, I wasn't expecting nachos, churros and hot dogs but they really could've offered food that was more substantial. One good thing is they don't really jack up the prices on concessions like they do in the US.

 

Michael Phelps swam in Heat 4 of the 400IM and broke the Olympic record. It was the highlight of the evening.

 

Our seats were behind the starting blocks and in front of the diving tank. It would've been great seats for diving. The Water Cube is impressive when you get up close, especially seeing the bubbles.

 

Standing in line at concessions, I see a familiar face. Josh Davis. We made eye contact and he seemed to recognize me right away. I knew him from my year working at the University of Texas at Austin. He was an Olympian in Atlanta and Sydney and is now retired from competitive swimming. In Atlanta, I bumped into him at the Olympic Village and I took a picture with him and I was wearing his gold medal. How cool was that?!?!

 

After the event, we walked around the Olympic Green. Olympic Green refers to the entire Olympic Park where there are clusters of venues for Athletics, Gymnastics, Fencing, Tennis and Hockey. Also includes the MPC Main Press Center and IBC International Broadcast Center. We wandered around snapping a lot of pictures. Found the TODAY SHOW set. No sighting of Matt and Meredith!