74 Days

The media summit today was out of this world, definitely something new, fun, and exciting! I started off with breakfast where I met future Olympic teammate Ariel (who happens to be a table tennis player from the bay area as well) before I was off to over an hour of broadcast stations. When I stepped in the first room, I was completely stunned, not by the way the room was set up or how professional it was, but because my first interviewers weren't even conducting the interview with English! CCTV did their research and found out that I speak mandarin, so here I am in the middle of the room with two young, Caucasian individuals speaking to me in perfect Chinese. I definitely wasn't ready for that and it served as a good wake-up call. It was extremely fun though because I was able to use my Chinese and hopefully expand the audience that is looking for me in London. For the next hour or so, I moved from room to room, doing interviews for different stations such as ESPN, NBC, and even a station that broadcasts the games to the American troops all over the world. This was far from the end though, because after an hour and fifteen minutes of interviews (they kept me on a tight schedule), I was off to an hour of photo shoots. They had nine different stations set up for different organizations and networks, and they had me go from one to the next (with foil and mask in hand) for photo shoot after photo shoot after photo shoot. After the photo shoots, I had about fifteen minutes before I had a round table interview where various reporters from different sources go back and forth to the different tables of athletes. For me, it was basically an hour and a half of straight talking and sharing my story, which was great and I hope people really get to follow my journey because of this. After the roundtable interviews, I was finally able to have lunch in the US Olympic cafeteria with the other athletes on the team. After lunch came a personal, twenty minute interview (with I believe someone with NBC or the USOC, it's hard to remember at times), only to lead into my one on one with NBC. NBC had me get into my full fencing gear, put me through makeup and touch up before putting me before one of the craziest things I have ever seen. They had me in front of a green screen, using a huge camera that could rotate and move in all directions (like a professional movie grade camera) to record a couple shots of me which they are going to use in a CGI of all the athletes going to London, walking together in a video. By this time I was already exhausted, but I had a long interview with E! and then another long one with NBC again. At this point, I am completely exhausted and ready to just hang out before the Texas barbecue they are hosting for Team USA, but they had me go for another video shoot that they will use on Team USA's YouTube channel. After a long day's fun but tiring work, I went to the athlete lounge where I went to relax and use Internet. After hanging out for a good 15 minutes of using internet and watching the golf channel (it was already on, I didn't go to it myself), Michael Phelps walks in, grabs a candy bar and starts chatting up about golf. Definitely a crazy, fun, exciting day that isn't even over; I'm posting this before the Team USA Texas barbecue that starts in about thirty minutes. I will hope to post photos soon, but for those of you who have Facebook, you can see some of the photos already at U.S. Fencing Association's Facebook page. 74 days until the Games- the media summit really got me thinking about how close the Games are and the grandeur of the event. It's coming.