Day One Finals

I've never been so excited as I was tonight at the Water Cube! Drew put the world on notice tonight that he's a force to be reckoned with. Following his sixth place position in prelims, he put in a solid effort in finals and maintained his position, defeating two very fast opponents.

We were finally able to talk to Drew tonight after his race, and he reports that he's feeling great. He was very excited about his improvement in the 100 fly, and was very pleased that he's now faster than Emma in this event! He's hoping to get us passes to the Athlete's Village in the next week or so, so that will be an interesting visit.

The Water Cube was packed to the rafters with cheering fans, and Canada was in fine form. The first final for Canada of the night saw three of our swimmers ranked first, second and third, and that's exactly how they finished. It was a clean sweep for Canada in the S13 (partially sighted) Women's 100 fly! Congratulations to Valerie Grand'Maison, Kirby Cote, and Chelsey Gotell. It was so great to hear our anthem and see our flags flying.

There have been some questions in the comments, and I'll see if I can answer them. Quite a few of the local people speak a bit of English. The hotel staff do quite well, and there seems to be at least one staff member in each restaurant who can speak some English. Emma and I went shopping at a local market today, and haggled by writing down numbers, either with pen and paper or via cell phone calculators, as none of the vendors could speak English. The market was advertised as a mall, but it was not like any of our local malls. Each vendor had a stall or two, in a very loosely arranged layout, and they sold everything you could imagine.

For those knitters out there, I knit half a sock on the plane on the way here, but nothing since. I expect I'll finish the sock on the way home.

Drew swims 100 freestyle tomorrow. Go Drew Go!