Welcome Readers!

Hello, and welcome to my Olympic blog!

"What?!" you say? "You're going to the Olympics???"

For those of you who just started wondering if I am secretly an expert at the sport of curling, let me explain. Through a string of contacts within Johnson & Wales University I have secured an internship with a company called Cleanevent at the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympic Games. For three weeks I will be living and working in Whistler, a town located a couple hours outside of Vancouver, where the Olympic competitions for mountain sports such as skiing, snowboarding, luge, etc will be taking place. Cleanevent is providing me with food, housing, and transportation throughout my time there, which makes up for the fact that this rewarding opportunity is unpaid.

So far as I know, my duties will be organizational tasks for both event management (dealing with aspects pertaining to the venues of the Games) and for camp administration (i.e. the the logistics of everything relating to the workforce, which I believe will number around 200 people). Right now our intern schedules are still being finalized and therefore I will not know my exact duties until I arrive in Whistler - a little scary, I know, but what can I do?

My flight departs Sunday, February 7th from Boston and gets in to Vancouver around 6:00PM. Upon my arrival I have two and a half hours to kill before the Cleanevent shuttle comes to take me (as well as some of my friends who are coming on another flight) to the camp in Whistler. Luckily for me, the shuttle will be picking us up in front of the Fairmont Hotel located right next to the airport. Fairmont is the company I intend to work for upon graduation, so I plan to take advantage of the opportunity and give myself a tour of the property, and perhaps partake in a meal before the shuttle arrives. We will be getting to the camp late on Sunday night, and therefore requested to not begin work until Tuesday, giving us all of Monday to get ourselves acquainted with everyone and everything. Other student interns will be arriving that Monday, including a group from JWU Denver.

My goal is to post daily updates on my activities, both for your sakes as well as to ensure that I don't forget any of the valuable experiences I encounter. I will do my best to keep these posts interesting, exciting and - hopefully - humorous. Feel free to use the comment box to ask questions that I may neglect to cover in my ramblings. I will also do my best to post corresponding photos (but not so many that they get overwhelming, if I can help myself).

That covers everything for now. Over.