London 2012! Bright pink posters, closed streets, congested tubes, and ridiculously happy people with foam fingers and megaphones. Oh, and a sudden influx of my fellow countrymen, the fun, outgoing, and obvious of whom were wearing American-flag capes. Free high-fives for everyone!
On July 28, we went to the men's team gymnastic at the O2 Arena, which was temporarily called the North Greenwich Arena. The whole floor was pink. Our seats were up high, but not so high to require binoculars. Jess, Ulfie, Anne, and I enjoyed watching our boys in blue flex their muscles on the six apparatuses (apparati?)
The next day, Sunday, Patrick and I went all the way to the Olympic Park to see Team USA vs. France face off in some basketball. Awesome. Entertaining. Fun. And the best part: seeing Lebron in real life. MmmmMMm. Yah, just like mum said, it's like he's wearing the batman suit. The game was a good one, even though everyone always knew who was going to win. The only down side: all of the Kobe fans in the audience. Barf. And it also seemed like there were way too many people there with really good seats who knew nothing about basketball. There should be a minimum basketball IQ required for the good seats. All the no-know people can sit up in the nose bleeds.
So a week later, on Saturday I got to go again to the Olympic park to see the men's semi-finals 10 meter platform diving! It was way more exciting than I thought it was going to be. Sometime during the wanderings around London that I did the week before with Patrick and his brother I purchased an American flag to wear as a cape. I didn't think diving was our sport, so I decided not to bring the flag. Foolish decision though, as we took 3rd place in the diving semi-finals and later that night won the gold! Shame on me for being a fair-weather USA fan. Next time I'll support them all the way.
So the post is short, and the pictures are few, but it's been an long time since the whole Olympics hype began and I am honestly out of enthusiasm for it. I'm glad it's over and I'm glad that all of the tourists are heading back to their homes. I'm looking forward to the tube returning to normal occupancy, and the bus routes to run as usual. I'm proud of team USA for winning overall, and even though I'm living across the pond, I'm still proud to be an American!
