Favorites Friday: Life at the OTC

I've been living at the Olympic Training Center for a few weeks now, and I've got to say, it's a pretty bizarre experience. We've got elements of "the real world" (working from 8-5 every day), sleep-away camp (everyone more or less wakes up and goes to sleep at the same time, and most meals are eaten as a group), and college (double occupancy rooms, communal bathrooms, and struggling to shave my legs in the tiny shower stalls). As someone who's had her own room and bathroom for the last year and a half, it's been an interesting adjustment back to very little privacy and dining hall food.

But everyone here is wonderful, and it's exceedingly nice not to have hours worth of homework and/or research and/or writing and/or work on the weekends!

And also... I'm living at the freaking Olympic Training Center. It's like I've died and gone to Olympic nerd heaven, where my building is named after a Games most people don't know or care about, and where I realize only after talking to someone all through dinner that he's a bronze medal-winning Paralympian.

Basically, it's the coolest. So I've attempted to condense my constant inner squeeing into a (relatively) short list of my favorite things about living at the OTC. :)

1. This is the first thing you see as you enter the complex, aka where I live.

2. My address is 1 Olympic Plaza. Seriously, is that not the coolest thing ever?

3. People I meet ask what sport I'm here for. "Oh, no, I'm actually here to sit in a cubicle for eight hours a day, but I'm flattered!"

4. I can walk past this:

and this:

whenever I want!

5. There are Olympic murals on the walls of the dining hall for London, Sochi and Rio. :)

6. I get to look at Eric Heiden's face on the window during every meal.

This also means I'm surrounded by people who actually know who Eric Heiden is!

7. At least two other interns have read The Boys of Winter, and another wants to borrow it from me when I'm done with my re-read. I have found my people.

8. Exploring all the facilities!

9. Everyone here watches sports. Everyone. I mean, duh, but I've never been a part of a group of people in which you automatically have a) something in common with everyone, and b) rivals. And then there's the experience of, "Oh, you hate the Gators too?! Let's be friends!"

10. Youth/junior national teams come here to train. And practices are open for anyone on complex to come watch. So...

11. I live a short walk away from an official Team USA store. (Hey, this is a list of MY favorite things, not my wallet's favorite things!)

12. I share living spaces with the likes of Allison Schmitt, John Orozco and Vitaly Scherbo, and those are just the ones I know of! 

13. Knowing that some of America's greatest Olympians ever have lived here in the past, and hearing stories about them. It's like the OTC's own urban legends. "When Apolo Ohno used to live here, he would hop up the Incline on one leg!"

...Yep, sounds about right.

EDIT: This blog is Apolo-approved!