Opening Ceremonies 2014 Olympics ~ The Alphabet

Did you watch the Opening Ceremonies for the Olympics last night? I must admit, I am a ceremony junkie! If there's any pomp and ceremony attached, I watch! The Olympics are no exception -- and they were fantastic, let me tell you!

Snowflakes that turned into....

the Olympic Rings!

Ooops, that one silly snowflake wanted to stay a snowflake!

I'm also an Olympics junkie and will be watching every night! Love the ice skating and snowboarding especially, oh and let's not forget the luge! How anyone can go that fast on a tiny track on their backs and feet first is beyond me!

I took these pictures from my TV, by the way.... and so as not to have complete Olympic overload, I've decided to post them over four days (I know, I know, that's a lotta pics!!) But this was so fabulous, it's gotta be shared!

So it is my hope that you'll come back for more over the next several days. If you didn't see the opening ceremonies, this will give you a taste, and if you did, well maybe you'll see something you didn't before.

This will  be the line-up....
Today -- Beginning with the alphabet
Sunday -- Athletes entering
Monday -- Carnival and Russian history performances
Tuesday -- Lighting of the torch

Enjoy!

The start of the performances showed the Russian Cyrillic alphabet, told by a most beautiful child as she reads her alphabet book. When the athletes enter, they will be in the order of the Cyrillic alphabet, rather than our own as is the norm.

Years ago a Russian friend of my brother gave me an English-Russian handbook and inscribed it with my name written in Russian. Since it is Sarah, he told me that it did not translate into Russian since it was a Biblical name, but that it was pronounced the same as in English. Anyway, in the Cyrillic alphabet, Sarah is written Capa. There's no individual letter for the "h"

S

A

R

A

Even though many of the Cyrillic letters look like ours, they stand for an entirely different letter. And then there are the letters that have symbols....

F for fish

the letter with pronunciation of "ZH"

YO

Hey, you've gotta have a cute little hedgie pic!

and a kitty!

I missed the letter, but he's a (big) cutie!

"Russia" in Cyrillic alphabet

You can see how the girls are standing on graphics on the floor. This was a new technique and was absolutely fabulous! I don't have the knowledge to explain it, but trust me, it was unbelievable! The graphics moved and changed with whatever was going on above the floor. 

Can you see that tiny white dot just below the center cloud?

That's the little girl who read the alphabet and then soared above -- 

the platforms and clouds are actually hanging from the roof!

Here she is floating over to the platform which is the third one you see in the first shot

Still a tiny white dot!

and here she will land on that floating platform -- 

seven of these platforms floated through showing scenes from Russia's history.

Of course there was singing and beautiful costumes

OK, that's it for today... next up will be some of the athletes entering. You'll see some very colorful uniforms! I hope you'll come back tomorrow to see!



♥♥