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 arrive at the Olympics in Beijing

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 in Beijing. 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 Marco Eagle and Naples Daily News and go online to marconews.com and naplesnews.com. Her e-mails will be put up on our Web site as they are received.

We had a chance to get around the Olympic Village today. By the way, Beijing is 12 hours ahead of us.

In the Olympic Village there are 48 buildings, each nine stories high.

In the sleeping quarters each room has three beds and I have a bed near the window. There is a small sitting area with a table. They are brand new and very nice.

There is a giant landscaped bush with Chinese symbols meaning Olympic Village. Near there are three-story high inflatable animals. They are the five mascots of the Olympics. Their names are Bei Bei, JingJing, HuanHuan, YingYing, and NiNi. If you take the first syllable of each and put it together it makes the saying, “Beijing HuanYing Ni,” which means “Beijing welcomes you.” The Chinese actually made a children’s cartoon series leading up to the games staring these five mascots.

The dining hall is about a quarter-mile long and an eighth-mile wide. They have just about every kind of food imaginable and it’s all free. They even have a McDonald’s that’s free, a coffee stand, fruit bar, Mediterranean stand, Asian stand, international food stand, deli, even a bread stand and ice cream bins. They have a few weird things like apple flavored milk and chocolate bread.

The entrance to the housing is three big blocks, hanging from pillars and a giant fountain with a dragon emblem on it. On the sides of the entrance is a gate that goes around the entire housing, part made of concrete. It is covered with symbols of dragons and fish, but also has torches that say “Dream World” to go along with the theme “One World, One Dream,” which is supposed to symbolize the unity of all the countries coming to celebrate the Olympics.

The entrance to one of the arcades and entertainment areas looks really cool. It is a view looking up at the top of two pillars that are lit up at night time and look like the Olympic rings.

The gym is huge! Each machine has an electronic personal trainer in it. It has a screen that shows how many reps you have done and at what weight and has a semi-circle type light that goes back and forth at the rate you should be moving with a different color light showing how fast you are actually going. There are also new machines called kenesis that basically consist of wires with handles and with four machines you can do any possible machine ever made. They are pretty neat and make you learn to stabilize your core and control all your muscles, not just the ones that you are working on at the time like most gym machines.

There are also personal trainers that walk around and show you how to use the machines because most of these people have never even seen them before. This place is really high tech.

That’s all for now, bye.