DAY FOUR: Today was a more moving around type of day, we started a little while later with a leaving time of quarter to nine, which meant we could all sleep in and have a more leisurely breakfast. That was really pleasant. Thomas and Merrie were up really early and so after they had breakfast they had a quick swim before getting ready for the conference we were attending.
The conference was the PINA Summit which was really interesting and it was good to hear about everyone’s different opinions of the matter they were discussing.
Once that was over the crew had a meeting of what we were going to do for the rest of the day, who was on what role, what that role involved and what we would need to do to achieve that specific role. Thankfully everyone now has a role and knows what they have to do.
Once that productive meeting was over we all piled into the bus with the plastic seats and no seatbelts and went into Suva so that we could meet Leslie Copeland. On the bus Brianna was briefing the Ringwood girls about what they needed to do about their roles and the athlete profiles, Thomas and Natasha were going over questions for Lesley and Merrie was going camera happy with the big industrial camera, which is good because we needed somebody on the video diaries to capture footage of the city Suva.
We got the Fiji Olympic house and filed into the top room that looked as though it was set up for a meeting. Natasha was fretting over questions and going through them in her mind, Thomas and Katy were messing around with their improvised camera setup made up of tables, boxes and oddly shaped tripods and everybody else was being friendly and sociable.
The interview went extremely well, the questions were well thought out and spoken clearly, Lesley’s answers were well spoken also and he spoke well with a good accent. ... came up and was very friendly and asked questions, shook hands and welcomed us with open arms, Lesley stayed to ask questions and answer questions that were burning in our minds.
We all piled into the van and drove not even a kilometre down to road to where Leslie went to school, here we met his favourite teacher and interviewed her about some memories she had of her past student. The interview soon turned into a crying session, when … told her story about how Leslie used to have to walk home after training and do his homework at school in the morning, it was such a beautiful story and quite a few of us were crying by the end of it. The way she told it was so full of passion, the room was thick with emotion and it was almost as if she had taken us, cameras and all back in time and we were seeing it ourselves. This woman was such a fantastic story teller and we must amend her for what she gave Leslie and the story she gave us.
Once again we all piled into the van and went to take footage of Leslie at his athletics track ... where we all found a bit of humour. The javelin run up where he trained was all scuffed and broken from where his many years of running on it had worn it down. It was hilarious to see little bits of loose rubber lying on the grass from where it was flung off by his shoes.
After we dropped Leslie off at work and explained to his boss why he was late we went back to his school to hear their cheering. When the teachers said cheering we were thinking cheer leading, when we really saw what they meant by cheering we were blown away. They were all in time and the explosion of sound as we entered the doors was enough for anybody’s spirit to lift, all the boys were happy and cheering, nobody was sitting out and their welcoming to our crew was fantabulous!
Our day wound down to a close as we finally ate a very late lunch and began our drive back to The Pearl resort, where we were staying, Merrie fell asleep on Natasha and Katy and Ed were having a bit of a meeting up the front. After a few hours of relaxing, talking to families and quiet working we all went to have dinner at The Uprising a neighbouring resort (We had quite a lough about the name) afterwards we worked on what we were doing the next day and then fell into an exhausted sleep.
-Merrie xox
-Merrie xox
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