Asbury College at the Olympics

After a final tour of Lingotto and the IBC, we headed off to Pragelato, which is where I’ll be working for the next month. JD and Josh came with me, although they don’t begin work yet, they just wanted to see the mountain.

What should have been a one and a half hour bus ride became three, because it turns out the torch decided to take the same route as our bus, so we had to follow it the whole way up. The torch motorcade consists of several special torch buses, some mini-floats with musicians and celebrities and neon lights, and several dozen motorcycles, police, etc. So we were stuck behind it the whole time. And we weren’t even behind the actual torch, there are several different motorcades, and we were behind the next leg’s motorcade.

This was very serendipitous though, because after our bus dropped us off in the middle of nowhere (Pragelato has to have a population of

After the torch excitement, I found my housing, which is a temporary, three-story hotel. It’s one of the most unique buildings I’ve stayed in, because it’s completely temporary. The rooms look like saunas, because the wood is not painted, and even still smells like a lumberyard. They are, however, very spacious, and we have a table, chairs, 4 dressers, and plenty of room.

Wow, there’s so much that I want to write, and it’s hard to get it out quickly enough, sorry if everything is a little sparse on details. After dropping off my suitcase, I met up with Kevin, who is another Asburian, and will be one of my two roommates here. We both needed to check in at our venue, where our uniforms were awaiting us. The whole bus system was ruined by the torch motorcades, so we finally caught one heading the right direction (there’s only up and down). I talked to several NBC interns on the bus, who sound like they have a similar deal, except they’re staying at the resort directly on the venue.

The bus drivers only speak Italian and are still learning their routes. This meant we got dropped off at the wrong stop. I can’t really blame the guy, because there are three Pragelato stops, and one isn’t on any maps. We finally got to our specific venue, and after about 20 minutes of wandering around, we found the TOBO offices. It’s actually a bit of a surprise, because I imagined that TOBO would have a huge area and a lot of support personnel already in place. Instead, there is only one temporary structure for offices (which there are four of, plus a common room). I met the Broadcast Venue Manager as well as the Broadcast Logistics Manager, who helped us find our uniforms, and introduced us to the 7-8 Italian students who had begun work last week.

The students were very kind, and since their shift ended in ten minutes, they took us back down to our hotel (we live on the same floor as them). Three of them invited us to dinner with them, which after 9pm is only available at the hotel, and is a decent cafeteria, the only problem is that it costs 12 euros. Sidenote: if you come to the Olympics, make sure you have a Visa card, because nobody is allowed to accept a Mastercard if they are on an Olympic venue. It’s almost disgusting the way they limit it, because even the tiniest off-venue stores accept Mastercard.

Anyway, we had a great dinner with some of the students, Paolo is studying to be a building engineer, which may not even exist in the US; it’s a hybrid between a civil engineer and an architect. Erika is studying to be a chemical engineer and Sara is majoring in languages, fluent in English, French, Spanish and Italian, and learning German and Japanese.

After dinner I came back to my room and spent a half-hour trying on my uniform, which is the most amazing thing I have ever seen. There is no way I will ever be cold. The cost is supposed to be within a few dollars of $1,000, and I definitely believe it. The jacket even has an iPod pocket, removable hood, everything. All of the fabrics are waterproof, the long underwear is actually very similar to Underarmour, and everything is made by Asic, (same as my sweet running shoes), which turns out to be an Italian company. What an amazing uniform.

There’s so much more that I want to tell, but I need to go to bed sometime. Tomorrow is my first day of work, and also my first day off. The venue is going through a security lockdown, which will supposedly last until 15:00, meaning actually 17:00. We may get a call in the evening to come in and do some work for a few hours at night, but it’s looking unlikely. It will give me a chance to catch up on some more writing tomorrow, and maybe get some more pictures of this area. The view is absolutely amazing, you can see for miles down the valley, and I’m surrounded by gigantic rocky peaks. I’ve uploaded a few new pictures, so take a look. Ciao!