Sochi Day 5 – 25/01/2014 Went into work for 9am today was so hard getting up. The roomies had to be up and out by 5 so got woken up at 4 and then tossed and turned until 7 and struggled out. Our little area is more set up now and when I got there everyone was on the computers and entering data in for the guest passes. They were converting Chinese names from English language into Russian spelling and having great difficulty. Imagine if they had to start with Chinese symbols, that would have been hilarious. I didn’t have to do this, of course it’s too hard for a foreigner : ) I had a bit of training and we did a few role plays of what it would be like to talk to the guests and the next minute Amber, Daniel and Al appeared and they had been let out early so were off into Sochi. I asked my team leader and she said that it would be fine if I go. Daniel got stuck without a working ticket to get through the barriers so we ended up half a mile behind the others and then couldn’t find them anywhere so as the train was speeding along we were walking miles along this train trying to find the other guys. Eventually we found them, I’ll sure they were hiding from us. Got chatting away and I was looking for a pronunciation for pork (Sivinni) in Russian and we were having a good practice when an American came over to help us out. He was from Alaska, very random and he was an assistant for the New Zealand team, to be honest I thought he was joking as didn’t know the Kiwis were in the house. He was a nice guy and weird to hear an American speak in Russia and look Russia when he talked! Got to the Olympic park and queued for like an hour to get our Russian Sim cards. Again everything takes so long and very long winded for the most smallest things. We met up with Kirsty then who is Al’s friend from home who did London 2012 and we decided to head to Sochi centre as nothing much happening in the park yet and nowhere to get into. Never seen a group of people so happy to go to MacDonald’s as we were. Just need a change after 5 days of rice and chicken and cabbage. Great to get WIFI and feel normal for once. Sochi is like a European holiday destination, think somewhere in Spain with lots of Palm trees and rows of shops. The Russian Riviera. We had a good walk round, hung out and then headed back, 1hr 30mins on the train and we arrived back in our neighbourhood. Had great fun trying to get into dinner as the guys names weren’t down and they were not giving in for nobody but I think after 20 minutes they just gave in and let us through but was really nice as we meet Liniki who was Russian but married to a Canadian and lives in Vancouver. She is looking after the Canadian team and said that they had 30 containers came over on a boat with all their stuff. Well there is 190 or something of them competing. Really interesting to talk with her as she is frustrated with all the problems with food, travel and all the issues the volunteers are having at the moment too. She was saying that it will take a long time for Russians to understand the volunteering mentality and see us as workers not people giving their time for free.
Posted on: Sat, 01 Feb 2014 08:30:20 +0000
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