The Closing Ceremony and 14 year old Jane

              Many people that I know, including myself partied pretty hard during the Olympics. I ran into a bunch of students on the streets during those wild parties and I would be lying if I said it wasn't a wee bit awkward.

             It was a lot of fun, but I am SO glad it was over. I couldn't walk home from work without being high fived. One of my students asked me why we high five here so much, its so.........white. To be honest Pedro, I don't know why we high five so much. As a Canadian there is so little that unites us. In fact, the closing ceremony was a whole lot of awkward.

Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

                    When I was in the 9th grade, I was not very tech-saavy. By tech savy I mean, I did not understand newer technologies nor did I understand the expectation of society to keep up with technology. In Comparative Studies with Mrs. Bancroft, we were supposed to do a presentation on religion.

I was pumped. This was my thing, I was and still am OBSESSED with world religion. Now let me explain to you how I ended up with a C-. And trust me this relates to the Closing Cerermony.

I worked really hard on a poster, and I researched all the different steps, scriptures, and philosophies of my topic: Buddhism.I drew these beautiful pictures and typed out these really clear explanations.

I presented to the class, and I thought I did an A+ job.
The next presenter went up. Oh crap. A power point presentation ( slide show). AND she gave the class cookies.

The next week I received my grade and I got a C-. My teacher said my poster was visually appealing, but was not very interactive or entertaining. It lacked depth. It was very " old school" so to speak.

The closing ceremony reminded me of this incident. There were lots of " GIANT" things and very superficial stereotypical things. Of course it took a lot of hard work to create those blown up beavers and mounties. But where was the technology? Where was the WOW factor? It was just like a poster presentation, but it left very little to think about afterwords.

Instead of going in depth on the cultural struggles of our mosaic, it purposely made a parody of Canada to show how " funny " and "self deprecating" we are. This is all fun and games but it shows that we don't have much going on other than those giant posters and signs that say " this is a summary of what we are". I know this ceremony took a long time to plan, but so did my Buddhism poster. The Olympics is a time to show off to the world how far we have come in our politics and technological advancement ( See Cultural Olympiads).

Unfortunately the closing image of Canada reminded me of my 13 year old self: Wanting so hard to prove myself to the world, but failed to look past the surface and give a more meaningful understanding of the topic.