The Olympic song has begun playing on TVs all around the world, again. Nationalism is renewed as countries take pride in their athletes. The hope of bringing home the gold fills the minds of each athlete. The XXII winter Olympics have begun in Sochi, Russia.

The opening ceremony was held in the Fisht Olympic stadium, one of the 11 new buildings built especially for the games. The opening ceremony included beautiful sets, costumes, music, dances, but the truly fascinating part was the projections on the floor.

All of the sets and graphic design were done by George Sepan and his team, a Russian who does his work in New York. The scenes of the ceremony followed the history of Russia in a series of dreams, showing the new, modern Russia.

Despite all the reportings of people being too scared to travel to Russia, the stadium was packed, and the show would be disappointing to miss. All of the technology in the show was amazing, from the projected images on the floor to the huge tracks that brought in the sets mid-air. The show only had one mistake, when one of the snowflakes didn’t turn into an Olympic ring.

Although the mechanics of the show were stunning, the story in the show was a bit slow. We traveled through a 1000 years of Russian history in dreams, with a fifth grade girl, Elizabeta, as our tour guide. We watched through dreams since Russians see themselves as dreamers.

Elizabeta first travels on a kite over the country, showing us the massiveness of Russia. We then watch a candyland version of the architecture in Russia as they become a state, Peter the Great seeing parts of his dream come true as St. Petersburg flourished in commerce, dancing scenes, featuring ballet, from Tolstoy’s War and Peace and Elizabeta appears one last time with a red balloon representing the end of the 20th century dream and we look forward to the future.

The ceremony ended dramatically with their symbolic dove of peace dance and an Olympic “gods” section with lit up structures of Olympians hanging in the air, each drum beat highlighting a hockey player or ice skater. Oh, and of course, the Olympic flame was lit by famous Russian athletes.

The opening ceremony also includes each country walking in, showing off their athletes and pride. But this time things were a little different, though. As each country walked in an animated globe on the floor lit up their home country.

Each country has special uniforms they wear for the opening ceremony, and the United States’ uniform must be commented on. The uniforms were designed by Ralph Lauren, and the knit sweaters were the most patriotic piece. They also wore cream colored pants with 2014 and the American flag on one side, along with black boots, and a winter hat also with 2014 and USA emblazoned on.

The uniform is quite patriotic, but even with the uniforms made in the United States, people still have issues with them. CBS Sports said “it’s almost like an ugly Christmas sweater vest mixed with some yoga pants.” The sweaters look warm and cozy, not ugly to me.

The team USA uniforms are up for debate, and can be talked about for the next 18 days over the Olympics. But I highly doubt they will be; there are 12 new events and 98 gold medals to be awarded, the biggest winter Olympics ever.

Make sure to tune into NBC nightly for Olympic events. The opening ceremony was great to watch, but the real show is the athletes competing. Also, check out nbcolympics.com, as well as the NBC Olympics channel on Youtube for extra coverage.