All my Olympics leading up to 2012 have felt just American. After living and traveling abroad, though, the these ones felt different. For the first time, I experienced them as an international audience and with an international audience.
And the international flavor makes it taste all that much better.
- I could root for multiple countries and have good reasons for it instead of just because I liked the flag or a movie shot in that country.
- I could hear about some of the scores ahead of time on Facebook instead of just assuming time zones in the future don’t really exist.
- I could watch competitions that didn’t involve the United States at all and still feel like I had a stake in it, instead of skipping those ones altogether.
- I could appreciate the sportsmanship of the athletes congratulating one another in English, even when none of them were native English speakers.
The world looks and feels and is different for me now.
