Day 9 in Lausanne

Bonjour!

Day 9 started off like most of ours here, waking up early and getting ready to take on the next step of our adventure. Except this was also business casual day number 2, so we all looked like we were on our best behavior. We went on a walk around 10 minutes away from our hotel, to the Olympic Studies Centre. We learned a lot, hearing first from Maria Bogner, the Head of the Studies Centre. She gave us an overview of the International Olympic Committee and the Olympic Movement, like how the hierarchy works, what goes in to planning each of the games, and information along that line.

The next speaker was the Marketing Training Manager Natascha Tritts, and she has lived all over the place in her life time, but is also a Syracuse University graduate. (Go Orange!). Her presentation went more into what her job entails, like how she struggles with keeping the Olympic Sponsors happy, the revenue that comes from broadcast rights, and other general information about marketing. The most interesting thing I took from her is that the main Olympic Game sponsors have each given more and more money for each games, but have always gotten the same benefits. But now after a while of a steady increase of the price for sponsoring the games, these sponsors now want more than what they get. She said that her and her team are continuously trying to figure out how to please the sponsors and also not take away from the integrity of the games.

Lastly, we got to take a look at some of the books and archives in the Centre, and this was my favorite part of it. I love memorabilia and artifacts and items along those lines, so it was awesome to see the old Olympic artifacts that are still preserved to this day. My favorite item to see was the transcript of the conference held by Pierre Coubertin, where we got to see the document where they officially voted on bringing back and starting up the modern Olympic Games.

After we were presented to and shown around the center, we had an amazing lunch, which was a delicious lasagna that pleasantly held me over until our next meal (more about that later). Then we got to go to the Olympic Museum, which for sure a sight to see. It started off with a history of the ancient Olympic Games, and then about how Pierre Coubertin brought back the games himself. Throughout the museum were some surreal items, like all the past Olympic torches, jerseys and uniforms from past games, medals and more.

The end of the museum I think we could collectively say was the most fun. There were many interactive games that we could play, like testing out skiing, our reflexes, shooting ability, and balance. Those games were not really up my alley, as I am not really good/ do not have the most athletic ability. But everyone had a great time regardless, and we got to see what it was like to be an Olympic athlete.

To end off our night, we got to have a group picnic. We got a grill, a whole lot of meats and chips, and went to town. Jake took over as grill master, and even though we had an undersized grill and only a knife to use, we made it work. Chicken, sausage, hot dogs, pork, cold cuts, and chips, it's safe to say that were all very content with the meal that we put out for ourselves.

We then went into a extremely intense 7 on 7 game of kickball, with me and Lin being the captains and picking our teams. The game ended with the bad guys winning 10 to 9, with my team putting up a good fight, especially due to the fact that Christian was injured from the get go. But the MVP of the game had to be Professor Kim, whose pinch hit single sparked a rally that would give our team the lead, but we would sadly give it up an inning later (sorry to everyone on my team). All in all it was great day with the group, and I can't wait to take on the next step of our journey together.

Wee wee!