Youth Olympians...Welcome to Singapore

Saturday evening Singapore was host to the first ever Youth Olympic opening ceremonies.  It was a great program and I was surprised how fast five hours rolled by.  Yep, I was there waiting, watching and waiting again for a little over five hours, but would definitely do it again.  I will share more pics and comments later. Here are fireworks from the lighting of the torch (lighthouse) with the Singapore sky line in the background.

Tonight (Sunday) I have been watching highlights of competitions which started today.  The local cable has a few dedicated channels for broadcasts.  I was busy cleaning today and turned it on late tonight, but now I'm consumed! I'm regretting not getting more event tickets.  I might have to take some time off work this week and attend more events.

I don't know what it is about the Olympics, but I love them, the spirit of them, etc.  What's more amazing is I don't have USA-only coverage.  In fact, in the broadcast I've been watching, the U.S. has only turned up 4 times I think.  For a while I was like...hello, didn't we send anyone?? :)  No worries, we did. 

Some highlights for you so far:

• China blew away competition in women's weightlifting - scary looking young women.
• Taekwondo is fierce and I would have loved to see it.  The only U.S. appearance to make highlight reels was a young man who lost to Iran in a semi-final.
• The same Iranian was set to fight/kick/compete his Israeli counterpart in the gold medal match, but withdrew due to medical reasons giving Israel the gold.  (The word on the internet is that Iran regularly protests competitions with Israel as they do not recognize them as an independent nation.  Sad for the kid.)
• U.S. men and women are favored in basketball, which is a 3-on-3 competition with 4-man teams (i.e. one substitution).  Both won today - the women demolishing the Singapore ladies.
• One of the women's bball games was 6-6 at the half.  That must have been painful to watch!  I'm not sure how long the halves are, probably not too long considering it's only 3-on-3.
• U.S. women's swimmer won gold in the individual medley today and the women's triathlete is going home with a bronze!
• Other sports today - fencing, tennis, roman-greco wrestling, badminton, rowing.
• Winners are coming from all over! It's so great to not have a handful of countries dominating the podium.  Maybe I'm seeing too many prelims and semis, but I really love the variety of winners.

This may consume my life the next couple weeks ;).