"Does anyone even know the rules of curling?" I asked my homeroom the other day. It was opening ceremonies -11 hours and we were all exploring the Winter Olympics website with the direction that we would each share something of interest after 15 minutes. I discovered that the preliminary rounds of curling had already began. In fact they were going on right then. "What are the brooms for?"
"To sweep the ice so the sliding thing will go where you want it," someone told me.
I clicked on the video feed of the United States versus Norway, and we watched as the athletes aimed their stones and slid them down the ice toward the target area. "What are those shoes?" I asked as their teammate followed the stone along with something that looked like more of a Swiffer than a broom, sometimes polishing the ice ahead, sometimes not. "They can literally walk on ice with them!"
"I think they're like little skis," one of the students suggested.
"Maybe," I said doubtfully as the stone knocked a couple other stones away and people cheered. "It's like Bocce, right?" I noted. "Whoever is closest to the center wins the round, and they score points for all of their stones that are closer than the other teams?" I nodded. "I get it now. It looks kind of fun! With the right shoes, I mean." I walked over to my desk and jotted "curling" on a post-it note.
A little while later we were talking about the things we had noticed, and one student showed us several mascots from past games. "Where are the next Winter Olympics?" I asked.
A few kids tapped their iPads. "Milano-Cortina?" someone answered.
"Really?" I said. "That's awesome. It is beautiful there!" I went back to my desk and added "Cortina 2026" to my post-it note. Why not? I thought.
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