Games Maker Day 1

WOW.. It's finally here! Day 1 of being a Games Maker for the London 2012 Olympics.

My first day wasn't too bad, I didn't have an early start as I was working at the Opening Ceremony. The team I am part of is Event Services (EVS) in the Common Domain (CDM) which is the biggest staffing team at the Games - we look after all the "common" areas of the Olympic Park such as the areas between all the venues, entrance gates, access control points etc.

When I picked up my uniform from the Uniform Distribution and Accreditation Centre in West Ham earlier in the month, I was given a Paralympic Volunteer Oyster Card to travel to and from my shifts. This is great apart from the fact I live just too far out of the Zones 1-6 where this is valid! I had two options - I could pay and get the train from my home town or I could drive to Wimbledon where I usually work, leave my car there and use the free travel courtesy of London2012 and TfL. I opted for the easier and slightly cheaper version on leaving my car in Wimbledon. I then made my way to the train station, got on the fast train to Waterloo where I hopped on the Jubilee line for my short trip to Stratford.

Upon arriving at Stratford I realised I was completely surrounded by a sea of purple and "poppy" clad volunteers all making their way to the Olympic Park. I followed in suite and once through the initial accreditation checks made my way to check-in for my shift. Ahh.. seeing as the Opening Ceremony hadn't even started and there was no spectators in yet I realised that everyone was only just coming on shift and obviously, as you can imagine, there was a very long queue of volunteers waiting to check-in and get that all important meal voucher! After standing around in the rain for quite some time in various queues we were all assigned a team and my team for the day was the blue team (Stratford Gate).

I had already started talking to a couple of other volunteers in the queue and we headed down to get some lunch and go for our afternoon briefing. This is where the volunteers are told about the daily schedule, any planned events, special instructions etc. Today they talked about the Opening Ceremony plans and at the end our staffing manager was making jokes about the Paralympic Torch running 2.5 hours late! After the briefing we headed down to our area where we got assigned a post - or should I say a task. Our team leader was a gentleman called George. Also in our team were 2 ex-Olympic team leaders (no names mentioned!) who too thought they could take over and tell everyone what to do. It got quite annoying and the few GM's that I'd already spoken too found them annoying as well to the point we made our own way down the Stratford Walk to meet and greet spectators. This involved directing them to the nearest facilities, taking photos of them in front of the Stadium and the rather controversial structure that the majority of people don't like a.k.a. the Orbit. At one point I was filmed in the backdrop to APF interviews (a french company) - still yet to find the footage thank goodness!

After the crowds came through it started to dwindle down quite a bit and George came to see the 4 of us and told us to go and have dinner. We eventually found the Aquatics/Water Polo workforce break area and stayed there until it was time to come back. Upon arrival back at our post there was hardly any crowds left entering the Park, no sign of any of our team or our team leader so we went for a walk down the bridge E which was closed to the public due to the Athletes parade. We stood around there for about 2-3 hours and managed to see the whole entirety of the Athletes parade as they made their way into to 80,000 strong crowd inside the Olympic Stadium. It was really great to see such inspirational athletes being so cheery and happy about representing their country in the Paralympic Games. Half of the time I think we spent trying to work out which country was which by deciphering the shortened country name and looking at the flag on the placards - which is easier said than done! However, we were with another volunteer called Cameron who I'd met right at the beginning of the day in the check in queue - he was probably the best out of us all at naming the flags/countries (it maybe something to do with him being an International Relations student that helps)! :-)

The other good part of being down at the athletes parade was getting to talk to some of the athletes themselves. We had various different athletes from different countries and sports come and talk to us. A few of these were: a guy from the Colombian Track and Road cycling team (Diego German Duenas Gomez - Photo right) and two members of the USA 7-a-side Men's Football team (Adam Ballou and Jerreme Wade) who are both taking part in their first ever Paralympics. It was nice to get a chance to chat to them and we wished them luck in their competitions and they took a few photos before they where briskly whisked along to go into the Stadium.

At the end of the athletes parade we made our way back to the Stratford gate for egress via the workforce break area to grab a coffee to warm up as it was a pretty cold night. Upon arriving back at the bridge all posts had already been covered, there was no sign of our team leader and several of us had to make our way back so we didn't miss our trains etc.

We said goodbye to the GM's we'd been with most of the day - I'm not sure if I'll see them again as some of us are on early shifts and some on late shifts.

I then made my way home and there we are... the end of day 1! Already looking forward to my second shift on Friday despite the fact it means a 4am start! (I'm writing this late, it's now Thursday night at 23:46 and I should really get some sleep now before my early morning.)

Until next time....