Every four years, the world gathers at one venue to celebrate arguably the world's most sacred event, the Olympics.
This year, the Olympics is being held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. A country filling the headlines lately with not only the Olympics but also an epidemic of Zika. Rio is a place filled with diverse cultures and can truly be said to meld every culture that makes up the country of Brazil, and nothing is more evident in the opening ceremonies.
The opening ceremonies were held on Friday at 7.30 EST, in Maracanã stadium that held nearly 80,000 people, excluding the 11,000 athletes. The athletes were in a separate stadium next to Maracanã as well as many other facilities surrounding the large stadium.
The ceremonies started with the fireworks along the top half of the stadium in a circle in typical Olympic opening fashion. Next came the Brazilian National Anthem sang by Paulinho de Viola, a famous singer and songwriter. Afterwards began the show, following in typical Olympic ceremony fashion, with a detailed history of Brazil. Starting with the forming of the rainforest, a sprawling picture of cells on the bottom floor of the stadium morphed into trees and then the sprawling forest. Then strings fell from the top and made what looked like a sprawling mess of vines. People representing the native ancestors ran out and began twisting and turning the lit up strings and trampling the forest floor. Migrants began appearing to the natives in the form of slaves from Africa and Japanese merchants. From here we began to see the buildings rise and people jumping them in what looked like an optical illusion to the edge of the stadium, only to climb a rock wall of city. From here things began to get a little weird as people danced on the rock walls and then supermodel Giselle Bundchen did her last career strut across the stage to Bossa singing "The girl from Ipanema." While that part was a little odd, next we saw people dancing on the blocks as well as on the floor, recreating what seemed to be a giant party.
Probably the part that stood out for me the most, was the central message Rio wanted to send about the state of the Earth's health. Messages in red flashed across the screen showing gut wrenching statistics about our climates current states, such as the temperature rise from the 1800's to now clearly showing 2016 skyrocketing past even the trend line. Pictures showing sea levels rising and what the anticipated rise was left both myself and my boyfriend watching in shock as we watched Florida be almost entirely under water. Rio then made the announcement that every athlete was going to be given a seed to plant as they walked in that would be planted later on, making 11,000 plants being planted.
Perhaps the most anticipated event came next; the parade of nations, ushering in 200 some odd countries all excited to compete for their countries chance at gold. Greece, following Olympic tradition entered first and the parade closed with the home nation, Brazil. Then a party in only the way Brazil could throw broke out and Carnival was brought to the Olympics.
Lastly, the torch was brought in and the cauldron was lit, fireworks broke out and a message of "This is for everyone" was sprawled across the seats in lights. This year Olympics is bound to leave us wanting more, stay tuned for all the competitions and hopefully some gold of the U.S.A.!
