It’s Back to Dorm Life As I Volunteer at the Olympics

Where do you put 250,000 extra people?

That’s exactly what’s happening at the Winter Olympics.

PyeongChang is a county of 44,000 people, located in the Taebaek Mountains and made up of a few small mountain resort towns.

You can imagine what happens to an area that size when 50,000 athletes, coaching staff, IOC staff and media, 50,000 organizing committee employees, 100,000 spectators, and 14,647 volunteers pull into town.

Think of the implications.

First and foremost: there aren’t enough beds.

So it’s time to prioritize. Athletes, their coaching and support staff, IOC staff, organizing committee staff, and press get first dibs. Then spectators, if they want to pay those prices. And then finally volunteers.

So the volunteers get spread out — all across the northeastern part of South Korea.

We get housed in hostels, motels, hotels, mountain resorts, cabins, and university dormitories.

600 of us were assigned to stay at Sangji University in Wonju, South Korea. We are about at 70-minute drive from the Olympic Sliding Centre.

As volunteer accommodations go, we’re actually quite lucky. The Pyeongchang Olympic Committee treats us well. I hear from the veteran volunteers who also served at the Rio Olympics that neither housing nor transportation were provided.

We get housing, three meals a day whether we work a shift or not, and transportation to and from our assignments.

So it’s back to dorm life.

That’s a bit of a shock to the system when you’re 54.

Turns out you can adjust to anything.

I have a bed (rather than sleeping on a mat on the floor like some volunteers are doing), a desk, a small closet, a laundry rack over my head and a single electrical socket.

Our dorm wing has a shared bathroom and one washer and dryer.

We eat at the university cafeteria.

My roommate is a lively 60-year-old Korean man with a hearty laugh and a penchant for finding joy.

My dorm wing is filled with Korean university students, a group of guys from a Chinese service club, a couple of older Korean men, and me.

I found a condom packet in my desk. (Yep, it’s a college dorm.)

But we have a warm, comfortable place to stay, the food is tasty, and the shuttle buses are pretty nice.

We squeezed into the community room to watch the Opening Ceremonies on TV, since we weren’t lucky enough to score tickets. And we had a blast together cheering on the world event that we are helping to make happen.

Turns out you can adjust to anything when you put your mind to it and go with the flow.

But I just wish I were adjusting to it with my wife along for the ride.

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