Olympic fun...

Well, the first week of the Olympics has come and gone...and London has been a delightful place to be. The weather has been a little bit changeable, but still much better than it was during June and July. Transport has been fine - in fact my morning commute to work is a lot quieter than usual, and in the evening coming home it seems to be mainly Olympic visitors on the train - which makes me think that many, many locals decided to decamp from London for the duration (or are at least working from home). London itself has that lovely energised feeling that I remember from the Sydney games.

This week I attended two Olympic events. My friend K and I were both lucky to have received tickets in the ballot, and so this week we experienced two very different type of events.

First up on Sunday evening was one of the qualifying rounds of the women's team gymnastics, out at North Greenwich (otherwise known as the O2).

In our session we watched the teams from Romania and Japan. I'm not altogether sure of the choice of the hot pink floor and wall surfacing, but it was a brilliant display of grace and agility...

The uneven bars are my favourite apparatus so we were delighted to have our seats down at this end of the arena.


Yesterday afternoon, we ventured into the Olympic Park proper as we had seats at the Velodrome for the track cycling.

The park was so full of people as it was also the first day of the athletics competition.

After about 20 mins of walking we eventually reached the Velodrome (above), for a fantastic afternoon. The two world leaders in cycling are Team GB and Australia - which could have caused me a little tension in terms of choosing which team to support. But, when it came down to the races I found that it wasn't a difficult decision at all - I just felt extremely fortunate to be a citizen of both nations, and would've been delighted to have either team win the afternoon's events, and proudly cheered for both.

 Australia's team in the men's team pursuit final

 And Team GB

 Gold - and a world record - for Team GB

...proudly singing my new national anthem with about 5000 other proud Team GB supporters.

It was a fabulous way to spend the afternoon and experience again all of the excitement of an Olympic games.

...and some of the beautiful wildflowers in the Olympic parklands.

18-hour days of televised coverage has also helped me accomplish some of my to-do tasks around the home. Last weekend I finally managed to get my bookcase painted - after which I'd actually felt like I'd been competing in a sporting event myself after contorting myself into some odd positions as a result of trying to paint a large piece of furniture inside a small flat...pictures to come in the next post...