I can't express how lucky Marco and I feel to be in London during 2012. We celebrated the Queen's Jubilee in June. It marked 60 years of Queen Elizabeth's reign. I learnt a lot about the woman and I have to say I admire her. I was also impressed with the people here and their love and admiration for her. The Jubilee started with the Flotilla down the Thames River. It poured rain all day but it did not stop thousands of people from showing up (and the Queen stood on her barge the whole time). The celebrations ended 2 days later with a concert in front of Buckingham Palace. In August London hosted the Olympics and it was a huge success!! What moved and impressed me the most was the Paralympic games. More tickets were sold at this year's Paralympic games than any other. The athletes were treated as heroes!
London had big screen TVs all over the city for both the Olympic and Paralympic games. Any place that had big screens had a crowd of people watching and cheering. Above is Trafalgar Square with The National Gallery in the back left side of the picture. The museum has a large Agitos (logo of the Paralympics) on the front. The logo was all over the city.
This is Barreto Hernan. He is the Paralympic Bronze medal winner in the Men's 200m Athletics. Barreto is from Argentina and has Cerebral Palsy. He was amazed at the cheers, the pats on the back, and the fact that people wanted their picture taken with him. (I hope he finally made it across Tower Bridge!) You can also see the crowd of people in the back ground watching wheelchair tennis on a big screen TV.
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Once the Paralympic games were over, London celebrated their athletes with a parade through the city. This is part of the crowd cheering the athletes... you can see them between to 2 blue banners... There were 21 flat bed trailers that carried the athletes through the city and over 90% of the athletes participated.
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Watching the crowd cheer and take photos gave me chills and it brought tears to the eyes of some of the athletes.
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As I was leaving the parade, I heard a school boy say that he was glad that he came and saw. I almost didn't go because of a threat of rain, but I'm also glad that I went. These people are amazing.
This is from the closing ceremonies... I get choked up every time I watch it and it was as though Coldplay wrote this song for these athletes! I hope you notice the swimmer swimming the butterfly with 1 arm and the runner who is blind and has a guide running beside her. They fall and they get right back up again. They are truely amazing!!
Not all the athletes in the Paralympics have birth defects... some had healthy lives and were injured by an accident. I also admire these athletes because they took something bad and turned their life around. They could have given up and felt sorry for themselves (like many of us would do, myself included) but they didn't.
The Paralympic games started in 1948 at the London Olympics. They were started by a doctor that hoped to use the event as therapy for those injured during World War II. It is the second largest sporting event in the world, behind the Olympics.
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I'm sorry if this is on a more serious note but I was very touched and thought I would share. I hope you were able to see the youtube links (please let me know if you were not able to open).
I hope you have enjoyed.
Suzanne
