Suzhou woman fulfills her Olympic dream as a volunteer for Rio Olympics

25-year-old Dong Siting from Suzhou, Jiangsu province works as a volunteer atthe Sports Information Center in Rio Olympics Village, August 10. [Photo/gjzx. jschina.com.cn]

Twenty-five-year-old Dong Siting from Suzhou, Jiangsu province fulfilled her Olympic dream working as a volunteer in the Rio Olympics and proudly shared her story from Brazil on August 10.

Dong is a volunteer at the Sports Information Center in the Olympic Village, offering information about competitions events, training sessionss and traffic to athletes, officials and members of the Rio Olympic Organizing Committee.

Dong started her volunteer work in Rio on July 23. Before the opening ceremony on Aug 6, there are many people turned to her and other volunteers for help.Dong works from 6:00 am to 2:30 pm. "We need to be very careful to provide timely and precise information to enquirers," said Dong.

She was confronted with some problems such as not being familiar with some vocabulary at the beginning. With help from other volunteers, she quickly learned the English words well so as to be able to communicate smoothly with people from different countries.

She's happy that she can communicate with Chinese athletes and officials in her work. She said that the experience of being a volunteer for Olympicat Games in Rio means a lot to her.

Her Olympic dream began when she heard the song "Under the Southern Skies" at the opening ceremony of the Sydney Olympic Games on TV; she determined to be a volunteer sometime in the future.

After graduation from Central University of Finance and Economics (CUFE) in Beijing, she chose to be a freelancer, which gave her much a lot of freedom to experience something different, as Dong saidDong said.

She applied to be a volunteer for the Rio Olympic Games in August, 2014. In order to realize her Olympic dreams, Dong worked hard on her language skills and, problem-solving abilities. She passed an online interview and was appointed as a the volunteer in November, 2015.

Trained by the China Volunteer Service Federation before flying to Brazil, Dong got the chance to know a lot of Games volunteers who share her spirit. She and some of those new friends share accommodation in Rio, cooking, travelling and shopping. She also bought tickets to watch some events, including basketball, badminton and pingpong.

According to Dong, her volunteer experience in Rio has made she more confident to chase her other dreams.

Although her voluntary work ends on August 22, Dong has decided to stay in Brazil until Sept 5 to visit some friends and get to know some surrounding areas, especially Ipanema, the city which she first heard about from her favorite song "The girl from Ipanema".

Back in China, she will continue to realize another dream: taking a working holiday in Australia before she's thirty.