Korea, Day 4

snowshoeing venue at Alpensia

The floors, in our hotel rooms, are heated which makes for a nice sensation when getting up in the middle of the night (barefoot) to go to the bathroom. The heaters are strong, and the past couple of nights our rooms have been bordering on the "it's too hot" side. We had to crack open the sliding door to our balcony last night to cool things down.

This is in stark contrast to the first and second floors of the hotel (lobby and common areas) where they keep the temperatures low (presumably to save money). That, in addition to going outside where temps are still hovering around "smack you in the face cold", is messing with our bodies. Some of us are getting sick. Thankfully, I still feel pretty good but Tim, my roommate, is getting progressively worse.

The "sickies" loaded up on kimchi jiggae (kimchi soup) which seems to be helping. I keep telling them that kimchi is the wonder (food) drug that cures anything.

Though we didn't get to attend last night's Opening Ceremonies, we heard good things about it. Space was limited and very few people secured tickets to sit in the audience. Today was the first day of competition, and we spent most of the time ironing out the kinks in our system as most venues ran their preliminary divisions.

All of us are on this committee because we each have sets of skills that compliment each other. Individually, we can hold our own in our respective local programs and, when we come together as one team, we're really able to accomplish a lot for these Games. I'm constantly in awe of what we're able to accomplish with our skill sets and roles complimenting.

I love this overall experience as it's teaching me patience and new ways of communicating. Not only do you have differing opinions, beliefs, egos, perceptions, etc., there is the language barrier to add to the chance of misinterpretation. This GOC is great. They're driven to make sure everything runs smoothly, and genuinely count on our advise to help make it happen. There's a lot of mutual respect between our GMS Committee and the Korean GOC, and it's making for a very friendly and efficient working environment.