New Friends

One of the things I love most about traveling is meeting new people from different places and cultures with different thoughts and perspectives. I attached a picture of Khour our National Paralympic Committee (NPC) assistant. We have been assigned 8. It's a volunteer job where they work 8 hour shifts for us doing whatever we may need. For a Games like this that primarily consists of driving and translating. They are awesome and most speak amazing English. Khour is Armenian by birth but moved to Moscow when he was like 3 because there was a huge earthquake in his town. He holds a Russian passport but speaks Armenian in addition to Russian as well as English and is currently learning Chinese. The amazing thing is that he taught himself English and Chinese by watching TV and reading books. Smart guy and so sweet. He likes to run as well and hopes to run his first marathon in August so tomorrow he and I are gonna work on a training program for him. He's super excited and so am I.

I love sitting with the NPC assistants and getting their take on the world. It's funny because I posted a facebook statement about the beauty of sport and how it brings people together despite differences. Tonight we were talking with Khour and asked him about the situation in Ukraine and he said exactly the same thing... sport brings people together. How wonderful is that. Just proves we're not so different after all.