July 22, 2024: I’ve picked up my accreditation and my 16 pieces of uniform. People tell me the hat looks good on me. The only reason I’ll wear it is to keep the sun off my face as very hot temperatures have been predicted in the coming days. My son demonstrates to me that the cross-body bag is not a secure solution for carrying phones and documents because the clasp can be quickly released from behind. We work out a solution...wear it slung differently. Tomorrow I have my only session of venue training where they’ll hopefully be able to answer questions about the 5 apps I’ve been instructed to download to my phone in order to carry out my volunteer “mission” as an Olympic Family Assistant. This is going to be a very techy assignment but I have also stashed a notebook and pen in my bag. My copy of the Olympic Family Manual has been saved to my homescreen with relevant pages highlighted. I’m expecting that after tomorrow’s session I’ll be a whiz at organizing transportation for “my person”, finding them seats at competition events and have all the three letter venue codes committed to memory.
July 23, 2024: On site training completed this afternoon and I’m not feeling particularly confident about my upcoming "mission". The training presenters zipped through the material and basically paraphrased everything in the manual that I had already studied. I had to listen closely because it was all in French in a kind of “you know all this already” tone without a microphone. And it was FAST. It turned out I had a different version of our basic communication app so thankfully that’s been sorted out. At the end of the classroom session they kept some of us back because it we’ve been selected to work one or more of the opening and closing ceremonies that make up the Olympic and Paralympic Games. Then we grabbed some snacks and water before being marched across the 8ème to the Hotel du Collectionneur, our check in facility throughout the Olympics. En route I started talking to another volunteer and felt reassured when she admitted she didn’t feel so confident either. Alice and I got distracted as we started comparing notes on our travels in Laos and had to race to catch up with the others. Afterwards I remembered two things: I was scared silly when I went to teach in Laos and that worked out; it’s OK to ask questions (but sometimes difficult to form them because I'm reactivating my French).
July 24, 2024: There’s a pre-Games volunteer event tonight at the Café Oz near Chatelet. I don’t know where that is and won’t know anybody who’s attending because Alice isn’t going but I put on my uniform and hop on the metro. Thank you Games’ organizers for the unlimited-use Navigo transport card. This is a huge volunteer perk as transit fares have increased during the Games and this card can be used up until mid-August regardless of whether I’m “working” or not. I get off in a daze at Chatelet and another volunteer approaches me. She’s heading to the same event so we go there together. And everyone is so darn friendly! We sit around a table, a Spaniard, some French people, me, an American who lives in Germany while comparing notes about our upcoming volunteer roles and switching from one language to another. A TV crew stops by so I might have been on a newsfeed somewhere or other. Hélène, the lady I ran into outside the metro will be working as a linguistic assistant also during the Paralympics. She invites me to watch the Opening Ceremony tomorrow at one of the parks near my house where they’ve set up a big screen. Return home feeling very upbeat and more reassured about volunteering. I’m surrounded by like-minded people once again, something that I keep realizing as I move from one volunteer experience to the next.
I’ve got this!
July 27, 2024: Day 1 as an Olympic Family Assistant. I ‘ve known the name of “my person” for a couple of weeks now and I keep my fingers crossed that we’ll get along as I cut through Parc Monceau on the way to my first check in. It’s still drizzling but not coming down as strong as last night’s deluge that seemed at moments like an ominous start to the Games. I can’t manage to check in via my phone and then suddenly I no longer have phone data and and the Wifi is sporadic. I am panicking and decide I’ll buy a phone card on my lunch break. Spend two and half hours waiting in the lobby with a lot of other Family Assistant volunteers because “our persons” haven’t shown up or contacted us. Is this going to be a regular occurrence? A lot of waiting and seeing? What I do know is that “my person” is likely to be the only one wearing a turban. I keep scanning the open spaces wondering if he’ll step off an elevator, come out of a restaurant or walk through the main door. I decide to do one more round of the lobby and finally there he is! Just like his photograph. We shake hands and I note his kind eyes and warm smile. “Come with us” he says, “We’re going to India House for lunch.” I say no thank you and that I won’t join them because I need to get a new SIM card. We agree to meet back at the hotel and he
hands me his business card. By now the rain is pelting down again as I set off in search of a telephone shop only to learn that you can’t buy one-off phone cards in telephone shops any more in France if you don’t have a bank account but that you can buy such cards in tobacconists which are all on strike today and imagine striking tobacconists in a nation full of smokers adds the young man I'm talking to. He's right. They are all closed I note as I splash my way back to the hotel. I head into the volunteer lounge where I meet a Dutch volunteer who is equally frustrated with the waiting game we all appear to be playing. Marianne tells me that there is a supply of SIM cards in the office on the top shelf left side. I go back to the office and ask for one…success! My phone is now working properly. But how come nobody in charge offered that possibility when I told them my phone was acting up at 9 am? “My person” never does get back from lunch but we chat several times by phone and decide that I should log out for today and return to the lobby at noon tomorrow. End of Day #1….fifteen more to go. The sun is out as I walk home.
To be continued
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