My first taste of the Paralympics was the orientation day where I met the paid staff and fellow volunteers and learned about the site and my role.

On the way in the metro, fellow volunteers grouped together as we are easily identifiable in our uniform. I sat with a man and a woman who had also volunteered at the Olympics. She has been at the gymnastics and he at the football and they had lots of stories to share. It was quite exciting going through the security checks to be seated for the first presentation in the Eiffel Tower stadium!

The beach volleyball ground has been replaced by a court sized soccer pitch with artificial grass ready for the blind football, in French Cecifoot.

We moved to the VIP lounge where we had a detailed presentation of our roles. We are called the protocol team and all up we are about 70 people for the whole site which includes the two stadiums. We will be working at different times so there will be about 25-30 of us at any time and 4 paid staff.

We will be looking after the people in the Paralympic Family. This includes members of the International Paralympic Committee, National Paralympic Committees, Official delegations such as Prime Ministers or Ministers and heads of Federations of the sports. Basically the VIPs of the games but they don’t use that word. I will be helping them find their way in site and getting to their seats to watch the events. We also manage the VIP seating in the stadiums and prepare the medal ceremonies.

We then went on a big walk around the site to familiarise ourselves with the key locations and access points.

The Champ de Mars stadium is for the wheelchair rugby and then judo. You may have seen the TV documentary about the Australian wheelchair rugby team called Forged in Steel on channel 9. I am hoping I might get to be around that stadium when they play.

In the afternoon we were lucky enough to get the chance to try out both blind football and wheelchair rugby! The idea was to help us better understand the sports and appreciate the efforts of the Athletes.

I was very lucky to get to hold an Olympic torch!