Sochi Day 1

(2/11/2014) 

Alright well yesterday had us feeling many emotions: happy, excited, scared, cold. The plane ride from Moscow to Sochi was very nice. We tried our first Russian food. The plane gave us something called pancakes with chicken. To some of you, it may sound good, or it may not. But let me tell you.. It was pretty disgusting. It was some bad pancakes stuffed with chicken. I think Russians like that stuff because at the food stand at the ski jumping venue, they were selling pancakes stuffed with other stuff too. 

Our hotel is also very nice. It's brand new! We are staying at the Marriott in the mountains in Krasnaya Polyana, which is about an hour away from the Olympic Village. This is good because we are 5-15 minutes away from the events up in the mountains. Most of the media is staying here, including NBC, and Marc and I really want to meet Matt Lauer. 

Before our event we did some walking around and we went to Rosa Khutor - a village that we were going to stay at, but it was all booked.

The weather here is better than Moscow's. You see a blue sky and you can actually see the sun!! Yay! Also, on the ground the temp is maybe about 40 and in the mountains low 30s. Not too cold, but after awhile you start to feel like your freezing, especially at night. 

The transportation system is great. It's very much like Disney's transportation system. The buses are brand new and they get you to your destination fairly quick. To get up into the mountains you go on a ski lift, which are also very nice. There are trains too, but we haven't been on them yet. 

We went to ski jumping last night.  It was the first time that women have participated in ski jumping at the Olympics.  There were three Americans jumping and they did well, but unfortunately they were bumped out of the top three and didn't medal.  We met some other folks from the USA (Minnesota and Texas) and had a good time talking to them.  Marc also met a guy wearing University of Michigan clothes and talked to him about Notre Dame (:

We will post pictures later when we get back to the hotel.