Team Canada Athletes At The Beijing Olympics Are Sharing What The Opening Ceremony Is Like

The 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics are now officially underway and Team Canada's athletes have been sharing photos and videos of the opening ceremony.

With the time difference between China and Canada, the festivities kicked off pretty early at around 7 a.m. ET/4 a.m. PT, so nobody would blame you if you weren't awake to watch it live. Here's what you might have missed!

The opening ceremony took place in Beijing's National Stadium, which is also known as the Bird's Nest, and featured 11,600 square metres of HD LED screens.

The Olympic rings were revealed through a virtual ice-breaking and they rose up above the entrance where the athletes would later walk through for the Parade of Nations.

Ice hockey player Marie-Philip Poulin and short track speed skater Charles Hamelin led Team Canada as the flag bearers during the opening ceremony.

Canada's Olympians were decked out in their all-red opening ceremony Lululemon gear, which featured a down jacket layered on top of a parka, a half-zip shirt, high-rise tights or joggers, a quilted trapper hat and a quilted scarf.

Blayre Turnbull, a player on the women's ice hockey team, shared a photo of her and Ryan Sommer, a bobsledder, embracing during the opening ceremony.

If that wasn't sweet enough, they're engaged to each other and saw each other for the first time in months at the celebration.

"Name a cooler place to be reunited with your fiancé after spending the last 3 months apart….I'll wait," Turnbull said on Instagram.

Emma Maltais shared a point of view video of the moment Team Canada walked out during the opening ceremony.

"Alternate universe? Yes. Tears? Also yes," Maltais said.

Eric Radford posted a photo with his figure skating partner Vanessa James as they hugged at the ceremony.

"I wish you could see our smiles! Very proud to march into the Olympic stadium for Canada," he said.

Kristen Bujnowski, who's part of Canada's bobsleigh team, shared a bunch of photos with other bobsledders during the festivities and said she was thinking of the athletes who couldn't join them because of COVID-19 or spare designation.

"You all earned this experience and were very missed," she said.

Ice hockey player Sarah Nurse called the opening ceremony "the best night with this special team."

Some Team Canada athletes who are staying in the Zhangjiakou Olympic Village weren't able to go to Beijing for the opening ceremony but they had their own little celebration while the festivities were happening in the other city.

The Olympians marched around the village in their Lululemon outfits while passing around a hockey stick with the Canadian flag attached to it!