***This is my final installment of the Paralympic Opening Ceremonies. I blogged about them in 7 parts including this post. Here is where you can read about the whole event: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, & Part 6.***
Unfortunately I did not get a usable shot of Rick Hansen. He gave a speech before this – alone in a spotlight. It was lovely.
I’ll get right to it. After a video about Terry Fox and his story, his mom and dad arrived in the stadium with a lit torch.
They walked over to a circle of people all holding Olympic torches – Terry Fox’s parents lit one torch – then that person lit the torch next to the person next to him.
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I just realized today that the Paralympics are finished on Sunday! The heck? I thought there was going to be another week of this! I’d better get to the indoor Paralympic cauldron being lit. EEP. This also means that I need to get to the outdoor cauldron this week for photos while it’s still lit! Good thing I figured this out today and not on Monday. I’d be all, “What? It’s over?” standing in the middle of an empty street with garbage blowing around my ankles. I’d also be holding my lanyard of pins and looking up the sky shouting “NO!!!!!!!!!!!”
But anyway, where were we? Oh right. Back at the Opening Ceremonies, where we were all dressed like this:
and we had just welcomed all the teams to Vancouver. The the dancing started. As you may or may not know, I am a big fan of the breakdance. So when Lucas Lazylegs (Please note: He calls himself that. True story.) came on the scene, the place went crazy. He walked out alone, on his crutches, with a spot light on him, and then he started break dancing up a storm – sometimes with his crutches, and sometimes without.
Soon other dancers joined him.
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Time for the Teams from all over the world to arrive at the stadium. Just when I thought, “Oh man. Can we sit down now?” I realized, “Wait a sec, these guys came a really long way to come to these games, I’d better make sure they feel welcomed!” More pompom shaking ensued.
Also, if you’ve ever had to travel in a plane in a wheelchair, it’s a big deal. Those isles are tiny and they have a special tiny wheelchair they use to get the person to his/her seat. So when you think about the people who came from far away places in Europe, Asia or the Middle East, and who those had to transfer from plane to plane, it takes extra time.
The DJs started announcing the names of the countries and the athletes started arriving. Here are only a few of the countries who participated – in alphabetical order:
Australia!
Looks like they have quite a few skiers on their team.
Germany:
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Just in case you missed Part 1 of the Ceremonies, you can read it here.
As members of a live stadium audience, we all had to practice our choreography. And I’m happy to announce that we were all part of a real world record last night – biggest flash mob – due to the coordinating dance moves of over 55,000 people.
But World Records don’t just make themselves. We had to work for it. First off, we had to learn the words to sing (I know! Singing AND dancing!) from these DJs:
These guys made me nervous – there’s no railing on the front of that stage. They had to be aware and alert the whole time they danced and played music for us all. I had to fight the urge to scream, “Watch out for the edge!” a few times during the evening.
We had to learn words like, “Hey!” and “Ohm!”
Those guys were awesome. They (and a girl in a white sweater) announced each country as the teams arrived. But wait, I’m getting ahead of myself. Next on the agenda was learning the dance moves.
They had dancing girls and guys all around each level to demonstrate the dance moves we’d be incorporating as well as some teeny tiny people down on the floor teaching us, too:
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