February 17, 2010 - Whistler, Canada

Day 5:
The village is set up much like a college campus. There are about fifteen buildings of housing. Here in Whistler the housing will be sold as condos once the games are over. In Vancouver, they were more like apartments. Each building is filled with a couple countries. In our building there is the USA, Australia, and Albania. Of course because we have more athletes, we take up the second, third, and fourth floors. The great part about having all the American athletes together is that this is really the only time that we get to meet people of other sports. Occasionally we may cross paths during our seasons, but rarely do we get so spend much time together. So I like to spend as much time as I can in the Athlete’s Lounge area. It’s designated room on the third floor with couches, televisions, and computers. The athletes go there and watch all the live feeds from all the competitions that day. There are unlimited snacks and drinks (dried fruit and Powerade). I’ve already spent hours and hours in the lounge. It’s fun to watch luge with actual luge athletes. They give you not only the play-by-play, but can also tell you about the personalities of all the athletes from the other countries. Plus it’s a great atmosphere to cheer for our home country whether is snowboard cross to figure skating. We all have one team. Spending time in the lounge will be one of my best village memories.