Received 08/18/2004 06:50

Day five of the Olympic Games!

Time: Wednesday 2PM
Location: Bits & Bytes - Internet Cafe Athens

I'm back, sorry for the delay in the updates. The internet cafe I prefer is 1u30min away from the place where I stay and cellphone email updates are awfully expensive. What have I been doing in the past three days?

On Saturday night we had dinner at a traditional Greek taverna, you can compare it with a tapas bar, but with Greek plates of course. I remember we had an interesting discussion about the behaviour of Greeks, especially Greek women. There's a huge difference between the behaviour of Belgian women compared to Greek, I can tell by experience! ;-)

Sunday was a lazy Greek Sunday, I took a day off to hang around in the house until 4pm. Since it was 'name day' and Sofia's birthday(my host), we decided to visit her father in law, who lives in Marathon. The one-hour drive from Thrakomakedones to Marathon took us along the Olympic Rowing Center and the Marathon lake which was heavely guarded, since it has a huge dam and it's the water reservoir for Athens city. Spyros(husband Sofia) father has a beautiful house located on a hill at a bay. Spyros grandparents and uncle live on the same hill, so we all joined up for Greek coffee and sweets. Memories and stories from the past were shared between the family members, the real Mediterranean family atmosphere! Back in Thrakomakedones we had suprise cakes for Sofia at midnight and went to downtown to have a drink.
On Monday I had the late shift at the main swimmingpool. It was going to be a great swimming night, all seats were sold out and 500 VIP's were present. Ian Thorpe(AUS), Pieter Van Den Hoogenband(NED) and Michael Phelps(USA) competed for the gold medal 400m freestyle. Thorpe beated Hoogenband in the last 50 meter, you should see the video I made, the crowd went crazy! Lot's of press people were talking about the 'Race of the century'! After the race we enjoyed one of Athens' most exclusive bars, Istioploikos near Faliro. We didn't expect to just walk in with our Athens 2004 sports uniform, but it worked! People wearing Gucci, Versace, Dolce, Longchamp, Louis Vuitton to show off and still they were beated by our Adidas uniform ;-)

Tuesday, an other day off since I had to catch some extra sleep, we only arrived home at 04.00am you know. I discussed with Sofia what needed to be prepared for the volunteer party on Thursday. I'll host a pool party for more than 70 international volunteers at Sofia's garden...let's hope everything works out fine! I met Susanna and some of her friends in the afternoon and went to tabel tennis at 6pm. Unfortunately Jean-Michel Saive, our Belgian player, lost his game against the Chinese Lin Ju (4-2). All eyes are now on Tim Maeyens (final rowing), Justine Henin(tennis), Aagje Vanwalleghem (gym) and Catherine Jacques(judo) for the next days. Of course we are happy with the two bronse medals the Belgian team already won.

Wednesday, today, I had a short morning shift (9am-12pm) with only heats, so no spectacular events. I think I'm going to enjoy the sun for the rest of the day, some shopping, and maybe waterski at the Marathon Bay...


Justine Henin @ work!