Light The Cauldron

It can be hard for Americans to watch something that is happening half a world away. If it's not "local," it's not "relevant." Having a Winter Olympic Games taking place all the way in South Korea might not be appealing to the casual viewer. Events will be taking place while we're sleeping in the States! Why should we watch?

Well, if you're on an article called "Olympic Blurb" it's likely that I'll have sixty or seventy reasons to watch. Or 100. But for your sake, I'll trim them down to five or six:

Live Events...Really!

PyeongChang is fourteen hours ahead of the East Coast of the United States - and seventeen hours ahead of the West Coast! To put it in perspective, an event taking place at 3:00 p.m. Korean time would be streamed live back in Eastern time at 1:00 a.m. (If you're confused, just go back 2 hours and then change the p.m./a.m. around. That makes it pretty easy to follow.)

However, if you remember back 10 years a…

With less than three weeks to go, it is time for the casual fans to finally realize that the next Olympics is quickly approaching. NBC has gone all out, reminding viewers at literally every commercial break that the Winter Olympics start in February.

Fans might get a bit sick of the repetitive commercials and promotional packaging at the grocery store, but there are lots of other ways to gear up for the Games that are far less obnoxious and incredibly enjoyable!

Prep with a Podcast


I enjoy listening to podcasts, and most of them deal with Star Wars. Understandably, I was a little worn out of Star Wars talk a few weeks after The Last Jedi was released, and I was looking to decompress with something different. That's when I discovered Olympic Fever, a new podcast hosted by Jill Jaracz and Alison Brown. They have been podcasting since September and are getting people ready for PyeongChang with podcasts dedicated to specific sports of the Winter Olympics. 
Not only do they talk about s…

We're ba-!
Waitwaitwait. 
Hold on. 
Lemme grab something...
(Click below)
We're back! If you've shut off your Olympic brain for the past 500 days, it's time to turn it back on. Get ready for shocking finishes, stunning upsets, tears of victory and defeat, and the same commercials over and over and over again. 
If you're new to the Olympic Blurb, welcome! I'm Claire Nat and I love writing about the Olympics. While I'm not writing about the Olympics I'm writing about my travels and about Star Wars. But when it's Olympics time, I devote seventeen days to sharing my Olympic experiences with you. (Here are samples of my blogs from 2012, 2014, and 2016, if you're curious.) 
I have been following the Olympics since they were held in Atlanta in 1996. I might be the only one who thought that Izzy was a pretty cool mascot, though I think he was marketed for my age range. (So the marketing clearly worked.) I remember not realizing how important the torch…