Last night I watched the Opening Ceremonies of the Olympics.. and was on the phone with my mum throughout the evening!  She reminded me of my ‘first’ Olympic experience… it was the Winter Olympics of ’84… I had turned 4 in December.. and had started figure skating… apparently I was doing ‘patch’ and did ‘fall school’ then the regular winter season.  After watching some of the figure skating on tv, my mum put me to bed.  Apparently I looked up at her and said, “Mummy,  don’t sign me up for TV yet… I’m just not ready for that yet!”  Then my mum realized that all the ‘extra’ stuff was maybe a bit much…..

In November I had the opportunity to be a part of the Olympic Torch Relay…. I blogged about it at my old blog (you can see the post HERE)… I was in Resolute, Nunavut at the time… and it was prety awesome to take part of something so HUGE!  A few days after arriving in Winnipeg, the torch was making it’s way through..but I didn’t go to see it…I had too much stuff going on at the time!

Today I headed out to the Canadian Mint here in Winnipeg… I had heard that the Olympic Medals would be on ‘display’ and you could go see the up close, but not TOUCH.  So I headed off and check it out!

Here’s Milo…in front of the Canadian Mint!! He’s a bit dirty!

On the outside of the “Mint” the medals have been reflected onto the building.

Inside the Mint there were quite a few ‘interactive’ displays…to see how much you are ‘worth’ if you were different types of coins (based on your weight)….and I got to pretend I was a GIANT quarter.. how cool is that?!

Then there was this really cool table set up… and it showed ‘how’ they were made… with the template things and stuff…. it was pretty cool!  I got to pick up a medal that hadn’t had the final stage done to it… so it didn’t have the ‘etching’ on it!  Here’s a copy of that silver metal…it was sooooo heavy and really neat to touch!!!  here’s the front, and the back the back!!

Here are three medals that are completed… the Bronze and Gold are for the Vancouver Games and the Silver is for the Paralympic Games!

No two medals are the same.

“Canadian industrial designer and architect Omer Arbel adapted large master artworks by Komoyue and Tlingit artist Corrine Hunt. Hunt said she chose the orca to represent the Olympics because a whale’s pod demonstrates teamwork. A raven, she said, represents Paralympians rising above physical challenges.”*

Pretty awesome.. that means the ‘hockey’ players that will win GOLD, no TWO of those medals will be the same–they will be truly a one of a kind thing!!