Mi Día Primero de Programa Cultura y Educación

My first day of Culture & Education Programme....

Today I went for my first shift at the Youth Olympic Village.... I took the morning shift, so had to wake up at 7am.... =.="""... damn early .... but who am I to grumble when many other people had to wake up at 5+++am to travel....

The competition won't start until 14th (aka 3 days later).. right now everyone was still suffering from jet lag. The only concern in their minds was still THE COMPETITION.... busy booking training facilities etc.... which left CEP as cold as it could get.... lol... not really... some of the Chef de Mission and Team Officials had shown some interest in it... let's hope it would turn up from here...

Anyway, the atmosphere at the village was awesome. Everywhere you go you see athletes from different countries... Although they are only 14-18 years old, boy you will never believe their age judging from their sizes.... It was a great feast for our eyes: both guys and girls.... The guys are like 7 feet tall, all muscular like crazy... The girls are not as bad.... at least I could find a few (I guess less than 10) who are shorter than me... =( .... hispanic and gorgeous.... Mexicans took the lead so far......er......anyway, 50% of them are minors and you can never tell them apart..... which means..... err... moving on....

Having said that, I didn't know how much of a language barrier I had with foreigners until today... Most people from Latin America DO NOT speak English... but they are very nice people.... apparently many translators (Student volunteers) can speak Spanish.... and I felt very Pai Seh.... never mind, another reason to polish my Spanish....

Usually, all CEP officers are equipped with the fluency in 3 languages (or more)... my third language was totally, utterly redundant.... guess what it is? Yup..... what other than our dearest Bahasa Melayu... the most it could be used on Malaysian representatives (which I didn't get to meet).... well, knowing one more language doesn't kill right?

Generally, I felt very positive from the first day of work. While I felt a little bit (or rather quite a bit) intimidated by their SIZES and the language barrier, the people who came were really polite... I even seized the chance to talk to the Spainish athletes and their Chef de Mission.... unfortunately I couldn't even hold up a 20 seconds conversation before saying "No puedo hablar español muy bien, puedes hablar inglés?"... =(