With athletes allowed to write blogs for the first time, it is going to be great hearing about their experiences. Here is a day in the life of Libya’s first Olympic swimmer Mercedes Farhat.

On the security:

The pool is only about a 10-minute bus ride, but we pass through a few security checkpoints with Chinese police standing at attention. How they stand like that for hours on end I have no idea.

I often wonder that myself. They don’t seem to get many breaks either.

On the rehearsals:

They also practice the medal ceremony with the girls walking out with the trays that will have the medals on them. I didn’t think that it would take that much rehearsal, but they are there every day.

On the Water Cube:

The pool is really nice. Of course it has to be for an Olympic pool, but they really went over the top when designing this one. As some of you know, the Water Cube is made to look like the geometric design of bubbles in a cube shape, so the entire structure has 3-D bubbles. You can see this from the outside, but what people don’t see online is that from the inside you can see them to the entire ceiling. The stands closest to the pool are all blue, then as it gets higher and higher, more and more white seats are there.

At first it looks random, but from afar you can see that it looks like bubbles evaporating when the seats are empty.

On the air quality:

The air is actually not too bad. At first it kind of looked like a foggy day, even when the sun was up. When you really start to focus on breathing it gets a little rough and tends to dry your mouth out pretty quick, but other than that it’s still breathable oxygen.

On the enviroment:

They are also really getting into the whole green movement. When you finish eating they have you separate your food from the recyclable waste and actually have workers at the bins who make sure it’s done right.