Mercedes Farhat

Submitted

Mercedes Farhat got to meet her aunt, Turya Farhat, when she visited Libya on her way to the Olympics with her father, Kamal. Turya Farhat is a member of the Libya Olympic Committee.

STORY TOOLS

• E-mail story
• iPod friendly
• Printer friendly

Tell us about it

• What would you add to this story? Tell us what we missed.
• Do you have photos from this event? Documents we need to see? Share with us.
• Upload photos & videos
• More ways to get your stuff online and in the paper.

RELATED STORIES

• Mercedes Farhat's blog: A look at the opening ceremonies, and getting ready for my race
• Olympics: Marco Island’s Mercedes Farhat, competing for Libya, falls short in prelims, enjoys experience
• Farhat fulfilling a lifetime opportunity
• Mercedes Farhat’s blog: Olympic village swells with athletes
• Olympics: Lely's Farhat breaking down barriers for Libyan team
• BLOG: Farhat describes a day at Village, Water Cube
• BLOG: Farhats look over Olympic Village

More Lely High School

• NFL: Lely's Octavien trying to stay in the league, now that he's in it
• Prep basketball: Pepsi Shootout begins Friday at Lely
• Lely High hosts basketball shootout

Share and Enjoy [?]

Marco Island’s Mercedes Farhat is making history as the first woman to swim for Libya in the Olympics. Her dad, Kamal, is her coach. She is able to swim for Libya because her father was born there. She will try to e-mail us as often as possible. Readers will get to read items in the Eagle and go online to marconews.com. Her e-mails will be posted on our Web site as they are received.

We left our house at noon on July 22 and drove to the Miami Airport. Our plane left at 4 p.m. and we flew to Rome. We were going to go see the Coliseum because we had a six-hour layover, but they wouldn’t let us leave without taking our luggage with us so we decided to take a nap instead.

We then flew to Tripoli, the capital of Libya, where my dad’s family met us at the airport. They were all so nice and even with the language barrier made it clear that they were happy we were there.

We checked into our hotel and I looked out the window of our room and could see the roof of the next door house. They don’t separate commercial from residential property. Houses, hotels, restaurants and shops are all mixed together.

There were roosters on the roof! They were our wake-up call every morning.

My grandmother’s house was right across the street so we just had to walk over and we were there. We ate all of our meals there. She made hand-made pasta, and a lot of foods I hadn’t ever seen before (and wasn’t brave enough to try). I also got to meet about seven of my 17 cousins and all of my aunts and uncles.

I’m not sure how to spell their names but they all tried to teach me Arabic... word by word. A lot of the words were even too hard to repeat, but I tried.

We had to swim at the Navy training center that was about 30 minutes away from where we were staying. The government assigned a car to drive us there twice a day. On the way we passed the Mediterranean Sea and the beach. The water was beautiful and bright blue.

When we got to the pool, the Libyan swim team, all boys, were already swimming. I didn’t get the chance to talk to any of them, but some looked pretty fast. They are training for a meet in Jordan coming up next month.

The last day we were in Tripoli my dad’s uncle picked us up and took us for a ride around town and to get gelato, an Italian ice cream. It is a very Italian-influenced town because it’s just across the sea from Italy. A lot of Italians live there, including my grandma who is pure-blooded Italian.

We saw a big carnival and went to a fish market. The fish market there is open all night, until 5 a.m., is what my uncle said.

At the time, the ground was all wet and it had these kind of gaps in the concrete for the water to drain into. Well, the highlight was when my dad got his foot stuck in the gap and fell in the fish water! It was probably one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen. If you know my dad at all he is very clean and doesn’t like to be dirty so we had to go back to the hotel so he could take a shower right away.

We met up with the Libyan team the next morning at the Olympic training center. There are a total of five athletes and 16 representatives. There are two boys for taekwondo, one boy for cycling, one girl for track and me and another boy for swimming. We each received six shirts, two pairs of sweats and a bag. We all loaded up into vans and went to the airport where the news media met us to talk before we boarded the plane.

There were also little kids that came over and shook our hands — it was pretty neat. Our flight had to go to Tunis, then to Dubai and was a seven-hour flight. The Dubai Airport was amazing. It looked more like a mall than an airport! That place is really growing. I can see it as being the place celebs go for vacation because it’s all new and really nice. We then had to board yet another plane to go to Beijing which took another eight hours.

As soon as we got off the airplane in Beijing we could see that they had definitely prepared for the Olympics. The airport was decorated with signs that said “Beijing 2008, one world, one dream.”

They had a separate line for checking passports just for the people going to the Olympics and we had to go get our badges accredited as soon as we passed through. The badges are pretty much a piece of thick paper with our picture, country, and all the places we are allowed to go on it. It’s laminated and has a special sticker that shows the word “OK” when checked under a special light card. It’s pretty neat.

After getting our luggage, we loaded buses to go to the village.

Our bus had the Libyan team and the USA rowing team on it. It took about 45 minutes to get to the village from the airport, but the entire way the side of the highway had banners for the Olympics and road signs made just for the event.

When we got there we could see all of the Olympic buildings. They call the pool the “water cube” because it’s made to look like the geometric design of bubbles in a giant cube shape. It’s the most amazing pool I’ve ever seen. If anyone has the chance they should look it up online because it’s one of those things you have to see, it can’t be described.

The track is called the Bird’s Nest because it actually does look like a bird’s nest! We then checked into the Olympic village.

I’m running out of time now because I have to go swim again. I will write more tomorrow, now that I have a computer and tell you all about the village and pool. It really is amazing. I’ll try to send pictures too.