As promised here’s a bit more info about the venue and competition:
The competition is being held in the Fencing Hall from the 7th to the 12th. After this, it will become the venue for Wheelchair Fencing. It was also used for Fencing in the Olympics. The building will be converted to a Conference Centre when the Paralympics are over. It is a beautiful building; it is amazing to see the detail that is put into the venues. As far as boccia goes, the floor is quite good… a smooth green rubber-type material. There are spectator stands to one side… although we can’t say that the chairs look especially comfortable! We expect to see them filled for the Games – according to friends who tried to buy tickets many days of competition are sold out!
Individual competition is first and we are separated, according to ranking, into 6 pools of 4. We are the top ranked in our pool – my first competitors will be from Greece, Spain and Portugal. After the pool play whoever finishes first in their pool will advance, as will 2 wild cards who have the best point advantage.
And, now for a description of the traditional Chinese tea… after finally getting to the right place:
the smelling cup is the thin one and the tasting cup is the wider one.
We ordered quite the variety and there were many other choices. We tried an Oolong tea, a white tea and a yellow tea. The oolong tea was served in a pot and we all got to experience the traditional service… first smelling the tea leaves, then warming the pot, and various other amazingly orchestrated steps until we all received a small ‘tasting cup’ and an even smaller ‘smelling cup’… we were then taught how to use them.
The tea is in the smelling cup at first, then you place the tasting cup over top of the smelling cup, pinch them together, flip it over and slowly separate the two. I only spilled a bit during this process. You then take the smelling cup and roll it between your hands while smelling it. This is the best way to get the aroma. Then from the tasting cup you take 3 sips… the first for drinking, the second for tasting and the third for enjoying (or something like that). We were also able to enjoy a show where another woman performed this service for us and gave us some black tea to try. It was an incredible experience and we were all very happy to share it.
The performance of traditional Chinese tea
Our group with the tea servers
We have also now had the Canadian Team Welcome Ceremony, where the Flag Bearer for the Opening Ceremonies was announced. We are proud to say that a wonderful athlete, Donovan Tildesley will be leading us into the Ceremonies on September 6th. We will describe more in our next blog.
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