Most of you know and have been following how we spend one half of our days : on the softball field. However, there is also another large part of our day that is spent hanging out in the village. It is like two different worlds ... the field is where we compete and is familiar to what we have been doing for almost our entire lives, but the village is like walking into a dream world or something you would see in a movie.
Thousands of athletes and coaches from every edge of the earth walking around, eating, trading pins, laughing. Boxers from Poland sparring each other right outside of your dorm. Long distance runners from Kenya and Tanzania zooming by you as you walk to the dining hall. It is so magical, especially for me because there is so much competitive energy and love for sport bottled up in one place, I just want to sit on a bench for hours and take it all in.
Part of the enjoyment of village life is interacting and rooting for all the other USA athletes. The other day I was in the training room next to a women's volleyball player. She had brought in some McDonald's and it smelled so good. She offered me an extra apple pie and I took her up on the offer and scarfed it down. I told her how I had been staying away from that side of the dining hall but had recently been dreaming of their apple pies (they fry them here instead of baking them like they do back home -- yum!) so it was funny that she had offered hers to me.
She said it was meant to happen and that if in return I could now start having dreams of their team beating China because that is their next big game coming up. I told her I would, and sure enough, they beat China yesterday in a VERY close game that all of us athletes back here were watching together. A bunch of the athletes here knew the story of the "apple pie exchange" and starting giving ME high-fives for helping them out - too funny. It is like one big family, rooting on our brothers and sisters, helping each other out one apple pie at a time :)
Speaking of rooting and cheering, today we spent the morning watching USA's 4 x 100 medley relay and saw Michael Phelps win his eighth gold medal ... it was as if time had stopped in the village and everyone was in their rooms doing the same thing. On the last leg of the relay, our whole team was yelling, cheering, sending every possible vibe we had for him to win the gold, and when he did we, and the village, erupted with excitement. We then belted into a chant of "U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!" It was beautiful.
To watch history with all those around you sharing that same excitement and emotion ... pretty cool morning. Then I was off to lunch where I separated from our team to meet some new people. I decided to sit with the Swedish women's handball team. This is a sport that our team has joked about playing in 2012 instead of softball. It looks so interesting and physical, and as it turns out (according to the Swedes) the US doesn't have a team. Perfect! So the Swedish women were teaching me the basics of the sport and even offered to have our team train with them, as long as they could all come visit it us in "beautiful California!"
This is one of the highlights of village life for me: eating with athletes from all over the world. The other day, Lauren Lappin and I had breakfast with two track athletes from Pakistan. I told them about my trip to Afghanistan (which is a bordering country) earlier this year and how beautiful the K2 mountain range is. They told me about some of the beautiful places in Pakistan and I told them I would love to visit there one day. When they asked us where we were from, they were shocked to hear we were American because they never thought Americans would want to visit them.
They also said they had always dreamed of seeing the beaches in California, and I told them that is where I live and they should come for a visit too! They laughed at that, but I smiled and I think there was a mutual understanding that there will be a day when we can visit each other and not have to worry about anything. When you are sitting over eggs and cereal in a dining hall at the Olympics, just about anything seems possible ...
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