Saturday, February 27, 2010

Olympics

I've always enjoyed when the Olympics were going on, both summer and winter. Not only do I enjoy watching some of the competition, but I love the stories of the athletes overcoming their adversities and failures! It's so inspiring to me! And then there is the on-going drama happening during the Olympics! There's never a dull moment! When the Olympics were in SLC in 2002, I volunteered down at the Olympic Square, where all the sponsors had fun activities, where the medal ceremonies occurred, where the ice skating venue was , and a daily parade went through. It was an exhausting job but I absolutely loved it! I loved making new friends, seeing the athletes, going to events and even being able to use my Swedish for once! I think the Olympic games help the world be united for 2 weeks of the year!

Ballet

I have been to the ballet Swan Lake 3 times in my life. Each time I've gone with my sister, JoAnn, who loves ballet with a passion! I wouldn't call myself a lover of ballet, but I can enjoy the story line and graceful moves. Plus it's always amazing to see the strength they have in their leaps and how many times they can rotate around on their one foot again and again! JoAnn got me in the habit of counting how many rotations dancers do. I believe the most we saw the other night was 26 rotations. Ballet started for me when my sister took me to see the Cinderella ballet. And I loved it(but then again I love anything "Cinderella-ish" since it's my favorite fairytale)! The step-sisters were played by males and they had to purposely be ungraceful! So after that I went to the ballet with her. As long as there was a definite story line, I enjoyed it. But if it was just abstract ballet to music, then not so much. Anyway, so we saw Swan Lake a few weekends ago. It's a classic ballet! If you've seen the animated movie "Swan Princess" then you have the basic story line of the ballet(except in the movie Odette and the prince still live at the end). In Swan Princess, Odette and the prince kill themselves since they cannot be together on the earth. So then in the finale, the music comes to a crescendo and the couple meets together in heaven(in the foggy stuff). Well the 2nd time we saw Swan Lake, the 2 dancers missed their cue and came after the music crescendo and the fog was starting to leave. So we were a bit disappointed to miss the "finale". Needless to say, we were anticipating seeing the finale this last time. But as it happened, in this finale, Odette and the prince are hanging together from the clouds against a moonlit scene, but the lighting never went on them, so we couldn't even see them(friends who went the night before told us how beautiful it was)! So we missed the finale again! I swear we must have the curse of Swan Lake finales! So we came home and you-tubed a Swan Lake finale so we could see it properly!