Nancilea Foster, Laura Wilkinson

Well, we had a few days of beautiful blue skies and last night the haze blew back into town.  It’s been smoggy all day today and the air feels like a green house.  It was even a little hazy in the pool, but nothing that
would affect our diving.

They were practicing fireworks the other night for the Opening Ceremonies this Friday.  Knowing the Chinese and their fireworks… I have a feeling Opening Ceremonies are going to be amazing!

I visited the ice bath, or as the trainers were calling it, the cold plunge, last night after 10 meter.  Don’t worry, no injuries, it just helps my body recover better.  It was way colder than I’m used to but a nice water polo player named Peter in the next ice bath over talked to me to help me through it.

Most of the divers are on the 4th floor of our building, but there wasn’t quite enough room for all of us, so Nancilea and I are directly upstairs from them in an apartment with 3 judo girls- Rhonda, Sayaka and Valerie.
Nancilea and I have our own room and bathroom but we share a common room. It’s been fun getting to know people from different sports!

Down stairs in our building is where the USOC (United States Olympic Committee) has set up their offices, medical & treatment rooms, and an athlete lounge. The athlete lounge has 2 rooms of computers with internet access, wireless throughout the entire floor, a room with phones that we can call home for free, and 2 rooms with tvs that you can either watch tv on or put in movies.

The dining hall is just a short 3-5 minute walk from our building and there is a huge variety of food to choose from.  But the best part about dining hall always has been and always will be… people watching!  You see that athletes come in ALL shapes and sizes and we all just stare at each other and eventually make some new friends.  My favorite past time is guessing which sport people play.

The other day Nancilea, Christina, and I ventured around the village a bit and discovered the massive workout/weight room.  It has pretty much every kind of training equipment you can think of.  That same building has massage available and steam rooms.  There’s an entertainment area that has pool tables, air hockey, shuffle board… you name it.  They also have a tv room filled with flat screen tvs hoooked up to DVD players so you can watch whatever you want.  There is also an outdoor lap pool next to it.

I haven’t visited the international zone yet, but there are apparently some cool stores there I have to check out! Very close to our building is a building called the Super Resident Center. It has a huge game room in it that makes you feel like you’re at an arcade! It also has internet and phones available for all countries. I discovered earlier this year that my website and foundation website are blocked by the Chinese web servers.  I also discovered today that while I can pull up all my emails on my webmail, my google-alerts do not download onto my computer through this server.  I had a problem with it several times.  It’s very interesting each time I discover what they do and do not allow.  I do have access to an American server though, so I will be updating the website as needed.

I just wanted to take a minute to share all of my little discoveries so far with you.

Laura

Laura Wilkinson
Olympic & World Champion
www.laurawilkinson.com
President, Laura Wilkinson Foundation
www.lwfound.org